U.K. Police Arrest 142 in Global Crackdown on ‘iSpoof’ Phone Spoofing Service

A coordinated law enforcement effort has dismantled an online
phone number spoofing service called iSpoof and
arrested 142 individuals linked to the operation.

The websites, ispoof[.]me and ispoof[.]cc, allowed the crooks to
“impersonate trusted corporations or contacts to access sensitive
information from victims,” Europol said^[1]
in a press statement.

Worldwide losses exceeded €115 million ($ 119.8 million), with
over 200,000 potential victims believed to have been directly
targeted through iSpoof in the U.K. alone, the Metropolitan Police
noted^[2].

Among the 142 people arrested is the administrator of the
website, who was apprehended in the U.K. on November 6, 2022. The
website and its server were subsequently seized and taken offline
two days later by Ukrainian and U.S. agencies.

Per the National Police Corps, the helpdesk fraud allowed^[3]
registered subscribers on the online portal to mask their phone
numbers and make calls impersonating banks, retail companies, and
government entities. The service was hosted on servers in the Dutch
city of Almere.

The ultimate objective behind the social engineering scheme was
to trick victims into revealing sensitive personal or financial
information, or alternatively transferring significant amounts of
money for financial gain.

The Politie stated that by placing a tap on the website servers,
it was able to glean valuable information about how the service
worked. It further led to the arrests of two male suspects, aged 19
and 22, in Almere.

The iSpoof website, the Met pointed out, was created in December
2020 and that it had an estimated 59,000 users, adding it began an
investigation into the criminal activity in June 2021 under the
moniker Operation Elaborate.

Judicial and law enforcement authorities from^[4]
Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, the
Netherlands, Ukraine, the U.K., and the U.S. participated in the
takedown.

“By taking away the tools and systems that have enabled
fraudsters to cheat innocent people at scale, this operation shows
how we are determined to target corrupt individuals intent on
exploiting often vulnerable people,” London Metropolitan Police
Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said.