Tejay Fletcher, the founder and leading administrator of banking scam iSpoof, has been sentenced to 13 years in jail after pleading guilty to four charges, including possession of criminal property and encouraging or assisting the commission of an offence. At its height, iSpoof had 59,000 users and Fletcher made around £2m from the site, purchasing, among other items, a Lamborghini, two Range Rovers and an £11,000 Rolex. The UK's biggest ever fraud sting saw Fletcher convicted of defrauding individuals and business around the world of more than £100m.
Tejay Fletcher, the mastermind behind the iSpoof.cc website, has been unmasked as the bright young man behind millions of phone scams that tricked people into believing they were being called by their banks or other trusted institutions. The website allowed criminals to disguise their phone numbers and perpetrate fraud on an industrial scale, scamming victims out of £100m of their hard earned cash. Fletcher, 35, who ran the website, was jailed for an effective 13 years following his arrest in 2019 in what is the biggest anti-fraud operation mounted in the UK. The number of people using iSpoof.swelled to 69,000, with as many as 20 people per minute targeted by callers using the site. More than 10 million fraudulent calls were made using iSpoof in the year to August 2022. Users could only pay via Bitcoin. For a basic subscription fee of £150 a month, users got a set number of minutes to make automated bot calls.
UK citizens are being warned about the risks of using mobile banking apps, after discovering that fraudsters are using increasing sophisticated methods to hack into smartphones and gain access to banking apps. Detective Superintendent John Roch, head of economic crime at the Metropolitan Police in London, said that although banking app technology was secure, criminals were exploiting human behaviour and "shoulder surf" victims while they entered their PIN before stealing their mobile phone. Once thieves have access to bank apps, they can see the victim's bank accounts and their savings and investments. Roch commented: "If you start to think of it like that, would you walk into a bar, put it down and turn your back on it? Probably not. The potential outcome is devastating for victims."
Consumer group Which? has warned UK citizens about four believable scams, from the highly persuasive pig butchering scam, so called because the fraudsters fatten up their victims by making a romantic connection before suggesting investing in cryptocurrencies or property in return for their money, to a fake missing persons' appeal aimed at encouraging people to unwittingly participate in investment scams by liking and sharing posts. Other scams include fake PayPal scams and alert pop-ups from malware-laden apps.
Stop Scams UK, a group of banks, tech firms and telecos, is to begin a pilot scheme using members' phone numbers and email addresses to track and disrupt scams. The initiative, which aims to use scheme members to gather intelligence on scammers and their methods, is intended to help disrupt the flow of criminal proceeds from "money mules" who let scammers transfer stolen cash through their accounts. Fraud cost UK consumers £1.2bn ($1.6bn) last year.
