UK finance scams surpassed £77m including face-to-face card fraud in shops and contactless fraud. The rising cost of living is forcing many people to seek alternative ways to make money, and fraudsters are capitalising on the niche. They will often trick victims into making quick bank transfers rather than using other, more secure payment methods. Money mule requests are when people knowingly or unwittingly let a criminal use their bank account to move stolen money. These will often appear on social media posts or via targeted emails.

Online UK fraudster Tejay Fletcher’s iSpoof website helped criminals defraud victims by posting as bank staff, is sentenced to 13 years over £100million bank “spoofing scam”.  iSpoof facilitated criminals and fraudsters to appear as if they were calling from banks like  Barclays, Samntamder, HSBC, Lloyds, Halifax, First Direct, NatWest, Nationwise and TSB, and also tax offices in attempt to defraud victims. The total losses of frauds enable by iSpoof in the UK alone exceeded £43m, with total global losses estimated at over £100m. Judge Sally Cahill KC jailed Fletcher (35) for 13 years and four months on Friday, and said “ For all the victims it was a harrowing experience” but added that he “didn’t care” about them at the time.” The late expression of remorse is regret for being caught rather than empathy for your victims”. At one point 20 people every minute was being targeted by criminals calling from masked phone numbers using technology bought form iSpoof. One victim lost £3m  and on average 4, 785 people who reported being targeted to Action Fraud was £10, 000.

On another case Callum Picari, 21, from Hornchurch, Essex; Vijayasidhurshan Vijayanathan, 19, from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire; and Aza Siddeeque, 18, from Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, were arrested on 24 March 2021.

Three men have been charged with fraud offences as part of a National Crime Agency investigation into a website which enabled criminals to subvert banking anti-fraud measures.

NCA cyber crime investigators began probing the paid for subscription website http://www.OTP.Agency in June 2020.

The site provided a service to criminals by helping them socially engineer bank account holders into disclosing genuine one-time-passcodes, or give other personally identifiable information, allowing multi-factor authentication to be bypassed.

This granted access to a victim’s online banking or other accounts, enabling criminals to complete fraudulent online transactions.

Investigators believe over 12,500 members of the public were targeted between September 2019 and March 2021, when the alleged website controllers were arrested and it was taken offline.

They were charged last month with conspiracy to make and supply articles for use in fraud. Picari was also charged with money laundering, and converting criminal property.