Administrator of iSpoof website sentenced to 13 years

A key figure behind iSpoof.cc, a website that helped criminals impersonate trusted corporations and scam consumers, has been sent to prison.

The main administrator of the website – which was taken down in November 2022 in an international joint action that led to 142 arrests – has now been sentenced to 13 years and 4 months of imprisonment by Southwark Crown Court in the UK.

The website allowed those who sign up and pay for its services to anonymously make spoofed telephone calls, send recorded messages and intercept one-time passwords. Users could impersonate an infinite number of entities – banks, retail companies and government institutions for example – falsely indicating that they were legitimate callers and causing substantial losses to victims.

An investigation showed that iSpoof earned more than €3.7m in the space of 16 months, while losses to victims currently stand at €49m in the UK alone, and €115m worldwide.

The website was taken offline as the result of Operation Elaborate, an investigation led by the Metropolitan Police and supported by Netherlands Police, Europol and Eurojust. Servers were seized by US and Ukrainian authorities on November 8 last year, and at that time was discovered to have 59,000 registered users.

The main administrator was arrested on November 6, and is believed to have received between more than €2m in profits from running iSpoof.