UK’s National Crime Agency Shuts Down Platform Enabling Scam Calls

The United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency (NCA) reported Thursday (Aug. 1) that it shut down a platform that was used to make 1.8 million scam calls to people in 107 countries.

The platform, Russian Coms, enabled criminals to place calls that appeared to come from the numbers of financial institutions, telecommunications companies and law enforcement agencies, the NCA said in a press release.

With the help of these spoofed numbers, the criminals then gained the trust of victims and stole their money or personal details, according to the release. They defrauded victims around the world.

“Criminals are increasingly using technology to carry out fraud and other crimes on an industrial scale, causing very real harm to victims in the U.K. and across the world,” Adrian Searle, director of the National Economic Crime Centre within the NCA, said in the release. “The NCA and our partners here in the U.K. and overseas are going after both the criminals and the technology they exploit.”

The Russian Coms platform was established in 2021 and was used by hundreds of criminals, according to the release.

It was available as a handset and as a web app that was marketed on social media, the release said. The handset was offered with a six-month contract costing between 1,200 pounds (about $1,537) and 1,400 pounds (about $1,793), while the web app was available for 350 pounds (about $448) per month.

The NCA arrested three people, including two believed to have been involved in the creation of the platform and one suspected of being a handset courier, per the release. Law enforcement partners in the U.K. and overseas will take action against users of the platform in the coming months.

“Whilst this use of technology, which can be called ‘crime as a service,’ promises anonymity, unbeknown to the criminal users, the services also store the users’ data, so we can identify who they are and how they operate,” Searle said in the release.

This news comes about a week after the NCA said it is working with seven U.K. banks to identify and take action against organized crime. In this public-private partnership, the banks are providing the NCA with account data that indicates potential criminality and investigators from both the NCA and the banks are analyzing that data, along with the NCA’s crime-related data.