Interpol has announced eight arrested in Ivory Coast and Nigeria in crackdown on phishing and romance cyber scams.
The initiative, called Operation Contender 2.0, is designed to combat cybercrime in West Africa, the agency said.
One such threat was a large-scale phishing scam targeting Swiss citizens that resulted in over $1.4 million in financial losses.
Cybercriminals posed as shoppers on small advertising websites and used QR codes to direct victims to fraudulent websites imitating a legitimate payment platform.
This allowed victims to inadvertently enter personal information such as credentials or card numbers. The attackers also impersonated the unnamed platform’s customer support agents over the phone to trick them even further.
Between August 2023 and April 2024, Swiss authorities reportedly received around 260 fraud reports, prompting a joint investigation that traced the company’s roots to Ivory Coast.
The main suspect in the attacks has admitted to the scheme and receiving more than $1.9 million in illegal financial gain. Five other individuals involved in cyber crime at the same location were also arrested.
In a separate case, authorities said they arrested a suspect and an accomplice in a romance scam in Nigeria on April 27, 2024, after Finnish authorities alerted Nigerian police through Interpol that the victim had been defrauded of a “significant amount of money.”
Such financial crimes involve fraudsters creating fake identities online on dating apps and social media platforms to create romantic or intimate relationships with potential victims, only to steal their money.
“Using an increasing reliance on technology in all aspects of our daily lives, cybercriminals are using a range of techniques to steal data and commit fraud,” said Neil Jetton, director of the Cybercrime Office.
“This recent successful collaboration under the umbrella of Operation Contender 2.0 demonstrates the importance of continued international cooperation in combating cybercrime and bringing perpetrators to justice.”
This comes after the US Department of Justice (DoJ) announced that 45-year-old Oludayo Kolawole John Adeagba, a dual citizen of Nigeria and the UK, was sentenced to seven years in prison for his involvement in the multi-million email compromise (BEC) business. .
Adeagbo “conspired with others to participate in numerous BEC cyber schemes that defrauded the University of North Carolina of more than $1.9 million and attempted to steal more than $3 million from victim organizations in Texas, including local governments , construction companies and Houston College, Department of Justice said.
It also follows from the message from Meta that it uniting with UK banks to fight fraud on their platforms as part of a partnership program called the Fraud Intelligence Reciprocal Exchange (FIRE).
