14 DAY TRIAL // A gang of six phishers were arrested in London and Navan, Ireland by officers from the Metro Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) and the Fraud Investigation Bureau of the Irish Garda. The suspects are accused of compromising more than 20,000 bank accounts and credit cards by setting up fake websites.
Police officers raided five residences in London and Navan on Tuesday and Wednesday as part of a police investigation codenamed "Operation Dynamophone", which looked into the theft of large quantities of personal and financial information. Five men and one woman, with ages between 25 and 40, were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit online banking fraud and other offenses under the Computer Misuse Act.
According to the authorities, the gang has managed to steal more than 10,000 online bank account and 10,000 credit card details by setting up phishing websites and spamming them to a large number of users. The victims were also tricked into providing a wealth of personal information about themselves.
There is strong evidence to suggest that as much as £358,000 (almost $600,000) were successfully stolen from the compromised bank accounts, despite the phishers trying to siphon around £1.14 million ($1.8 million). In addition, by using a standard formula for establishing fraud losses, the authorities estimate that as much as £3 million were stolen using the compromised credit card details.
"We have taken this action to shut down an organised criminal network running an online phishing and account take-over operation. A great deal of personal information was compromised and cleverly exploited for substantial profit. By disrupting the operation we have hopefully prevented further loss to individuals and institutions across the UK,” said Detective Inspector Colin Wetherill, from the Metropolitan Police Service's PCeU.
“Clearly old-fashioned phishing by creating a bogus banking webpage remains a way to make dirty money. Make sure that you have your wits about you, and don't click too easily on unsolicited links,” Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos, advises.
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