As reported by Security Brief, a two-month-long investigation by INTERPOL between March and May this year involved 76 countries and clamped down on organised crime groups behind telecommunications and social engineering scams. INTERPOL says police in participating countries raided national call centres suspected of telecommunications or scamming fraud, particularly telephone deception, romance scams, email deception, and connected financial crime.
Preliminary figures reached so far include:
- 1,770 locations raided worldwide
- 3,000 suspects identified
- 2,000 operators, fraudsters and money launderers arrested
- 4,000 bank accounts frozen
- USD $50 million worth of illicit funds intercepted
This is a huge result for those behind the operation and INTERPOL are leading the way in investigating cybercrime, but the true successes will be determined in how the suspects are tried at court. The amount of evidence collected will be gigantic and it will require high levels of organisation to properly investigate the offences. Much could be learnt from the arrests and this could potentially be extremely valuable in terms of learning how these criminals have been able to operate without capture for so long. On the contrary, other criminal groups will also be monitoring the situation to learn what mistakes were made for this number of criminals to be caught.