A 35-year-old London man has pleaded guilty to being a key figure in running a website used by fraudsters who are believed to have conned 200,000 UK consumers out of over £43m.
Tejay Fletcher, of Western Gateway, Docklands, London was a leading administrator of the ‘iSpoof’ fraudster website.
The website provided fraudsters globally with services enabling them to ‘spoof’ or copy the details of banks such as Barclays, Santander, HSBC, Lloyds, Halifax, First Direct, NatWest, Nationwide and TSB or other trusted organisations.
Spoofing victims believe they are being contacted by their bank or another trusted organisation because the incoming number or email address looks familiar. But in fact the phone calls or contacts are being perpetrated by ‘spoofing’ fraudsters around the world posing as trusted financial organisations.
The Crown Prosecution Service, which authorised the charges against Mr Fletcher, said the fraud took place on a “shocking scale” with £100m conned from investors globally including £43m in the UK.
The CPS said its probe into iSpoof was the largest fraud investigation that has ever taken place in the UK. The investigation was led by the Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime unit and was supported by international law enforcement partners.
Mr Fletcher pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court yesterday to charges of making or supplying articles for use in fraud, encouraging or assisting the commission of an offence, possessing criminal property and transferring criminal property.
Mr Fletcher is believed to have made at least £1.3m from the racket. He was a leading administrator of ispoof.cc, described as an “online shop” which offered fraudsters the ability to subscribe to buy the tools they needed to carry out their criminal trade of conning victims.
Fraudsters who paid a monthly subscriptions to iSpoof were provided with a variety of services including the ability to use a caller ID ‘spoof’ to appear as if they were calling victims from a bank or other trusted organisation.
Using iSpoof services, criminal users could call unsuspecting bank customers pretending to be genuine employees, and – with the assistance of other iSpoof tools – obtain passwords, PIN codes, and then access customers’ bank accounts and empty them.
The CPS said the total losses to victims of frauds enabled by iSpoof in the UK exceeds £43m with total global losses estimated to be at least £100m.
In the UK there were more than 200,000 victims targeted by users of iSpoof. Many iSpoof customers have been identified by the police and are being investigated and 70,000 victims have been contacted by the police as part of the investigations.
The amount received from users in iSpoof subscriptions and then paid out to Mr Fletcher and others linked to iSpoof was 112.6 Bitcoin (BTC), or approximately £3.2m.
Mr Fletcher was said to have been the website administrator for the majority of time iSpoof was operating and received by far the largest share of the profits of iSpoof, receiving at least £1.3 million from the fraudulent site, the CPS said. The CPS plans to use confiscation proceedings to prevent Mr Fletcher from profiting from his crimes.
Europol says so far 142 suspects have been arrested around the world in connection with the scam.
Thomas Short, specialist prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “As the leading administrator of the iSpoof website, Tejay Fletcher helped to provide fraudsters with the tools to cheat innocent people on a shocking scale.
“Fraud is an insidious crime and the cost to the many victims in this case has not just been financial; it has also caused huge emotional distress and devastation. We want to encourage all those who think they’ve been a victim of a fraud to come forward and report it.
“The CPS works closely with police to bring fraudulent offenders like Fletcher to justice and I hope today’s conviction sends a strong message to criminals that they can no longer hide behind online anonymity.”
Helen Rance, Metropolitan Police Detective Superintendent, said: “I am incredibly proud of my team in the Cyber Crime unit who ran this investigation resulting in Fletcher pleading guilty. He was the ringleader of a slick fraud website which enabled criminals to scam innocent people of millions of pounds.
“We are doing more than ever before to protect Londoners from spoofing and cyber fraud and devised a bespoke plan to reach out to victims who were targeted via iSpoof.”
Mr Fletcher will be sentenced in May.
• Anyone who believes they may have been a victim of fraud is urged to contact their bank immediately and report it to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 or online.
