Thursday 24 November 2022 10:35 AM Are YOU a victim of Britain's biggest ever fraud? How iSpoof criminals operate trends now
Police today dramatically revealed the details of Britain's biggest ever fraud operation, which saw officers take down a website that criminals have used to scam 200,000 people in the UK out of at least £50million.
The Met will contact around 70,000 Brits in the coming days to tell them they may have fallen victim to iSpoof.cc, while more than 100 suspects have already been arrested.
Scammers paid a subscription to use a programme that let them appear as though they were phoning victims from major banks including Barclays, NatWest and Halifax.
Officers are now working to track down hundreds more suspects both in the UK and across the world, with the FBI, Europol and Eurojust also involved alongside authorities in Ukraine and the Netherlands.
Below we reveal how the website worked, how many people it may have scammed, and what lies next for the victims and the criminals behind it.
Anyone trying to access the iSpoof website is met with a message saying it has been 'seized' (pictured)
The website allowed users paying between £150 and £5,000 in Bitcoin for subscriptions to disguise their phone number so it appeared they were calling from a trusted source.
This process is known as 'spoofing'.
Criminals posed as representatives of banks including Barclays, Santander, HSBC, Lloyds, Halifax, First Direct, Natwest, Nationwide and TSB.
They then attempted to trick people into handing over money or providing sensitive information such as one time pass codes to bank accounts.
Teejai Fletcher, a British 34-year-old, from east London, is believed to have been involved with the operation. He was arrested last month and is in custody after being charged with fraud.
A total of 59,000 criminals bought accounts since iSpoof was set up in December 2020, making £3.2million for the site's owners while they scammed vast sums from unsuspecting victims.
The average loss from those who reported being targeted is believed to be £10,000.
TikTok user posts a video with the caption 'RIP to all you iSpoof users' earlier this month as dozens were arrested across the UK. There is no suggestion the TikTok user was involved in the scam
At one stage, almost 20 people every minute of the day were being contacted by scammers hiding behind false identities using the site.
In total, 200,000 potential victims in the UK alone are thought to have been targeted, with many more across the world.
The majority of victims (40 per cent) were in the US, followed by Britain (35 per cent). Many people in Australia and other European countries were also targeted.
In the 12 months until August 2022 around 10 million fraudulent calls were made globally via iSpoof, with around 3.5 million of those made in the UK.
Of those, 350,000 calls lasted more than one minute and were made to 200,000 individuals.
Losses reported to Action Fraud as a result of the calls and texts via iSpoof is around £50 million. But because fraud is vastly underreported, the full amount is believed to be much higher.
