An international police operation that shut down a telephone spoofing service has led to the arrest of two Victorians over alleged scamming that netted them $1 million.
The Australian Federal Police announced the arrests on Friday, saying the Metropolitan Police in London had notified them about the scam.
The iSpoof service enabled perpetrators of help desk fraud by letting scammers appear as though they were calling from legitimate numbers of banks, tax office, and other bodies.
It also allowed scammers to generate one-time-PINs, to make them look more genuine.
The service was first discovered last year by The Central Netherlands Cybercrime Team, during an investigation into help desk fraud.
They found iSpoof was hosted on servers located in the Dutch city of Almere, and when they learned the operator of the service was based in London, they brought the Metropolitan Police into the investigation, and that led to a larger international operation.
iSpoof’s owner was arrested in London early in November, two Dutch nationals were also arrested, the FBI took control of the server, and according to Europol, arrests have also been made in Australia, the USA, Ukraine and Canada.
The AFP said it searched properties in “Boronia, Brighton and Brookfield where electronic devices, including mobile phones, computers and tablets, fake licenses, bank cards and Medicare cards and small amounts of illicit drugs were located”.
A 16-year-old Brookfield teen and a 30-year-old Boronia man have been charged with producing false or misleading documents, and computer crimes.
Both have been released on bail to appear again in December 2022 and February 2023 respectively.
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