TJ Fletcher “spoofed” for 13 years 4 months. conclusions
The head of the service for calls on behalf of iSpoof banks and 170 users robbed their victims of $ 125 million
The original of this material
© CNews.ru05/24/2023, The head of a fraudulent service for calls on behalf of banks was imprisoned for 13 years, Photo: bbc.com
Roman Georgiev
The London police said the destruction of iSpoof and the arrest of its administrator and nearly 170 users was the result of the largest ever investigation into a fraudulent group.
The bank is calling you. You have suspicious activity
The administrator of the closed iSpoof phone number spoofing service was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison. Tejay Fletcher, a 35-year-old British citizen, pleaded guilty in April 2023 to a range of cybercrimes, including fraud, possession of illegal property and its transfer to others.
The iSpoof service allowed its customers to substitute phone numbers. This was actively used by various scammers who called the victims allegedly on behalf of banks, tax authorities and other institutions.
The scammers told victims that their funds were at risk due to suspicious activity in their accounts and tricked them into revealing sensitive financial details or transferring money to accounts under their control.
Fraudsters posed as representatives of such banks as Barclays, Santander, HSBC, Lloyds, Halifax, FirstDirect, Natwest, Nationwide and TSB, among others.
Securitylab.ru, 05/23/2023, “Creator of iSpoof phone number spoofing service sentenced to imprisonment”: The iSpoof site operated in the public domain and attracted customers with the promise of anonymity and the ability to show any number on the screen of the called subscriber. Users of the service paid for minutes of conversation in bitcoins, and the site even featured a commercial that demonstrated how easy it is to deceive a person on the phone.
However, the anonymity of iSpoof users turned out to be illusory. More than 50,000 users of the service have been identified by law enforcement, and about 200 people, in the UK alone, have been arrested for real fraud using the service. According to the police, about 10 million fraudulent calls worldwide were made through iSpoof in a year, about 3.5 million of them in the UK. — Inset K.ru
Fletcher was sentenced to 13 years 4 months. The rest are waiting for their turn.
The London police said in a statement that the operation against iSpoof and its associated gang was the largest anti-fraud investigation by the Metropolitan Police in history.
We keep a million in the bank and plevanto on the law
The iSpoof service was paid. Its users used Bitcoin to buy the number of minutes during which they planned to make fraudulent calls.
The amount of damage, according to investigators, in the UK alone amounted to 48 million pounds (almost $60 million), and in total, the attackers robbed their victims of more than 100 million pounds ($125 million).
Fletcher himself earned about 1.7-1.9 million pounds (more than $2 million) on this service. In addition, he bought expensive cars and watches from manufacturers such as Rolex and Audemars Piguet.
The iSpoof service was liquidated in November 2022 as a result of a massive operation. During it, both the convict and 168 other people were arrested.
RBC news agency, 11/25/2022, “Bitcoin transaction analysis helped police arrest more than 100 people”: Analysis of bitcoin transactions helped the British police arrest more than 100 people, according to the Metropolitan Police. In the largest anti-fraud operation in the history of the country, led by Scotland Yard, iSpoof was taken down and suspected phone scams were caught. […]The iSpoof service masked phone numbers so that it appeared that the scammers were calling from a trusted source (a process known as “spoofing”). […] The average loss among those who complained of fraud was £10,000. In total, victims of the scams are believed to have lost tens of millions of pounds, while the iSpoof scammers have earned almost 3.2 million pounds in 20 months. — Inset K.ru
More than 30 mobile phones and a wide range of SIM cards were found at Fletcher’s home.
“Through iSpoof, Fletcher has provided thousands of attackers with the ability to scam innocent victims into millions of pounds,” London Police said in a statement. “At the same time, thanks to illegal income, he led a luxurious lifestyle.”
Hacker.Ru, 11/28/2022, “Police shut down iSpoof service and arrested 142 suspects”: Dutch Cybercrime Department informsthat iSpoof servers discovered in Almere, a small town near Amsterdam, while investigating a bank support fraud. This discovery led to a new investigation, already focused on the activities of the service. As a result, law enforcement officers found the iSpoof operator, who was based in London, and Scotland Yard was immediately notified of this, which began its own investigation.
As it has now become known, the Dutch police have been listening to servers in Almere for a long time and collecting information about how the service works and who uses it. British authorities write that a covert operation to spy on iSpoof began in June 2021, which eventually helped investigators to get an idea of the criminal network. Europol joined the investigation in August 2021 to help the UK police collect evidence and data from law enforcement agencies from around the world (specialists from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Ukraine, the UK and the USA took part in the operation) .
It is also reported that Europol helped identify additional users of iSpoof, a number of which were already known to law enforcement (due to involvement in other high-profile cybercrime investigations). […] The Dutch police emphasize that they are now actively deanonymizing more and more users of the service, based on evidence collected from hijacked servers. — Inset K.ru
“The telephone scam hydra had one head cut off, apparently quite a large one,” says Anastasia Melnikova, director of information security at SEQ. “Law enforcement has shown that the arrogance of cybercriminals is punishable and that even very secretive scammers can be exposed and sent to jail. Without belittling the achievements of the London police, we have to state that this is only one such gang, and others will soon take its place. Their potential victims can reliably protect themselves from telephone scammers only on their own – without succumbing.
