No fewer than 245 Indonesians have topped the total number of over 500 arrested by the International Police (Interpol) in a coordinated operation targeting multi-million dollar phone and email scams across the world.
Information reaching us said that more than 23 countries were involved in what is tagged: ‘Operation First Light 2015’which resulted in a series of raids across the region with the largest in Indonesia where police arrested 245 Chinese and Taiwanese individuals, and in Cambodia, 168 Chinese nationals were taken into custody.
A statement by the Interpol media unit, Korean, Nigerian, Filipino, Russian and Taiwanese nationals were also among those arrested in China, Hong Kong (China), Korea, Thailand and Vietnam during the two-month long operation during which more than 30 suspicious call centres were identified.
The statement described social engineering fraud’ as a broad term that refers to scams through a range of means – including phone calls and social media – to manipulate or trick people into giving out confidential or personal information which can then be used for financial gain by the criminals involved.
In one scam discovered during Operation First Light 2015, fraudsters claiming to be couriers would contact a victim saying a parcel in their name had been linked to criminal activity.
The call would then be transferred to other scammers pretending to be police officers who directed the victims to a fake website where bogus arrest warrants featuring their name had been posted.
In order to prove their innocence, the victims were told to provide personal details and send money to designated bank accounts and in some cases, scammers posing as police officers took the cash directly.
Speaking in the statement, Duan Daqi, Deputy Director General of International Cooperation Department at China’s Ministry of Public Security and Delegate for Asia on Interpol’s Executive Committee, said operation First Light 2015 had been extremely successful in not only in identifying and dismantling the syndicates behind these social engineering frauds, but also in building effective working relationships with the agency’s foreign law enforcement colleagues who share a commitment to take action against these crimes. [myad]
