Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

UK Fraud Enforcement Failures: Action Fraud’s shortcomings, scarce prosecutions, and how asset‑funded specialist policing and disclosure reform could strengthen investigations

Published on: 02 September 2024

Published by a Law360 reporter

Legal News

Article summary

Russian Coms

Russian Coms was a service exploited by hundreds of offenders to place more than 1.3 million fraudulent calls, defrauding victims around the world between 2021 and 2024. This highly developed spoof-calling operation enabled scammers to ring victims while making each call appear to originate from pre-selected numbers, including financial institutions, telecommunications companies and law enforcement agencies, deceiving targets, gaining their trust and stealing their money and personal details. So advanced was the ruse that handsets were sold by criminals pre-loaded with sham applications, meaning that if the device was seized or retrieved by investigators or law enforcement officers it would appear to be a standard smartphone on casual inspection. The phones were also fitted with a burn app that erased the handset immediately, blocking any unwanted scrutiny or examination. The NCA believes that Russian Coms was deployed to target approximately 170,000 victims across the UK, resulting in financial harm totalling tens of millions of pounds. In matters reported to Action Fraud (the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime, run by the City of London Police, the lead policing force on fraud issues) the typical loss to each victim exceeded £9,400 in those reported cases across the UK...

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