Trio caged for £3.7m phishing scam

Three men have been jailed for a total of 13.5 years for their part in an attempted £3.7m phishing attack on online bank accounts and credit cards following a successful investigation by the Metropolitan Police’s Central e-Crime Unit.
Ayodeji John Kareem, 38, Vincent Alonge, 31, and Babatunde Fafore, 41, were sentenced at Snaresbrook Crown Court after pleading guilty to their offences at earlier hearings.
The convictions are believed to be the first prosecutions in the UK involving such detailed evidence of an organised Internet phishing operation and are the result of a prolonged investigation by the PCeU, codenamed Operation Dynamophone.
The investigation focused around a network of individuals who systematically obtained large quantities of personal information, such as online bank account passwords and credit card numbers, through online phishing in order to steal money from those accounts, and fraudulently use credit card details.
The trio were arrested in August 2010 when detectives from the PCeU, assisted by other forces, executed search warrants at a number of addresses in London and an address in Ireland.
Enquiries revealed that through the course of their activity the defendants compromised over 900 bank accounts and 10,000 credit cards.
Attempted account take over fraud amounting to as much as £1.13m was identified in respect of the compromised bank accounts – with over £599,000 successfully stolen.
It was established that fraud had been successfully committed in respect of over 1,400 of the compromised credit cards – amounting to actual losses of over £570,000. The precise loss in respect of the remaining card numbers is yet to be established. However, using current industry estimates it’s likely that total fraud on the compromised cards exceeds £3.1m.
The defendants were responsible for sending unsolicited emails to members of the public purporting to be from their bank and directing them, via a link, to visit the bank’s web-page. However, the victims were in fact visiting a previously established bogus web-page where they were asked to confirm their online bank account or credit card account details. In this way the defendants and other members of the criminal network were able to obtain the details of many thousands of bank account and credit card details.
In the majority of cases detected, the details were then used to carry out fraudulent bank transfers and credit card transactions.
During the course of the operation Fafore, Kareem, Alonge and other co-conspirators communicated across the Internet, from wherever they happened to be in the world, and sent and received details of compromised bank accounts, credit cards and other information related to the continued operation of the scam.
Financial investigators are carrying out enquiries to trace and restrain the criminal proceeds of the defendants’ activities with a view to secure their confiscation.
DI Colin Wetherill, Police Central e-Crime Unit said: “We all have a role to play in the protection of our private information and we would urge the public to exercise great care when supplying their personal details online.”