Prolific social media fraudster jailed for three years

A prolific cyber prison who used encrypted social media platform Telegram in a sequence of long-running frauds has been sentenced at Croydon Crown Court to three years in jail for fraud by false illustration, provide of articles for use in fraud and possession of articles for use in fraud.

Ramzan Abubakarov, aged 21, of Hendon in North London, had pled not responsible to all fees however was discovered responsible of 10 offences on 9 December 2022.

He used varied on-line guises to coordinate fraudulent actions on his Telegram channel, which at one time was one of many largest channels within the UK – the place Telegram is a comparatively minor participant in contrast with another platforms.

Abubakarov was accountable for creating the iChop.it cyber crime net service, in essence a platform for shopping for and promoting compromised private and monetary knowledge.

Through his sale of hacking instruments to different cyber criminals, Abubakarov is considered in the end accountable for losses of greater than £1.9m.

He additionally engaged in varied frauds himself, together with submitting faux tax return claims to HMRC, making use of for the federal government’s Bounce Back Covid mortgage scheme, and hacking into private financial institution accounts.

Metropolitan Police cyber crime lead, detective superintendent Helen Rance, stated: “Taking away the tools and systems that enable criminals to exploit and target innocent people is a great challenge to us and our partners, however, we are dedicated to bringing these criminals to justice. We are reinventing the way that fraud and cyber crime is investigated, and through this we are able to identify and target criminals and safeguard further victims.”

Abubakarov’s actions got here to mild after he was recognized as being behind the varied frauds by the Cyber Defence Alliance (CDA), a UK-based group of banks and regulation enforcement businesses that work collectively on such points. This data was then handed to the Met’s cyber crime staff, which tracked him down by proactive policing cryptocurrency monitor and hint, communications knowledge evaluation, and associate work with banks and HMRC.

When arrested in November 2021, police discovered and seized plenty of laptop computer computer systems and smartphones from Abubakarov’s dwelling tackle, evaluation of which led to the invention of compromised private and monetary knowledge on greater than 30,000 victims, customized phishing kits designed to take advantage of varied retail banks, and over one million UK and worldwide cell numbers.

Detective constable Oyedeji, who led the investigation, stated: “The success of this investigation is as a result of effective collaborative working relationships with our partners, especially the CDA. It’s rewarding for my team and I knowing that we managed to safeguard thousands of victims from cyber criminals.”

The profitable conviction of Abubakarov is the most recent victory for the Metropolitan Police in its combat towards digitally enabled fraud.

In November 2022, it performed a key position in a multinational takedown of iSpoof.cc, an underground web site that bought name spoofing companies enabling cyber criminals to impersonate trusted organisations, akin to banks, when focusing on victims.

Besides arresting the positioning’s London-based administrator, the police had been additionally in a position to extract greater than 70 million strains of knowledge and cryptocurrency cost information from the positioning server, which they used to trace down and arrest greater than 100 UK-based service customers, all of whom had spent not less than £100 value of iSpoof.cc companies.

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