Ukraine helped expose the largest cryptocurrency scam in the UK

The London police report that the fraudulent website iSpoof «helped» British users lose more than 3.2 million pounds (about 3.9 million US dollars). The fraudsters paid iSpoof in bitcoins for a service that allowed them to hide their phone number when calling ordinary British people. The scammers posed as top managers of the country’s leading banks and tricked people into transferring money or providing access to bank accounts. As of August 2022, about 10 million fraudulent iSpoof calls were recorded worldwide, including about 3.5 million in the UK.

The British police call the scam «the largest fraud operation in the country» — more than 100 people have been arrested, and the number of potential victims is 200,000. Scotland Yard’s Cybercrime Unit worked in international cooperation with authorities and law enforcement from the United States and Ukraine. After identifying the malicious website and exposing the scam, it was taken down.

At the moment, the Scotland Yard police have a list of phone numbers of people who have been affected by the scam, and law enforcement officials have promised to contact them via SMS. The police warn that they will start sending SMS messages starting today, November 25, so any messages allegedly received from law enforcement before this date should be considered compromised and invalid.

As a reminder, researchers from Avast, an information security company, have warned users about the spread of a new malicious VenomSoftX extension for the Google Chrome browser that steals cryptocurrencies. Binance, Coinbase, Gate. io, Kucoin, and Blockchain.com. Cybersecurity researchers estimate that the hackers managed to steal at least $ 130,000 worth of cryptocurrencies.