Melbourne man caught in scam services site investigation sentenced

The Melbourne County Court has sentenced a man to two years imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 10 months, following an investigation into an overseas website selling spoofing services.

The Melbourne County Court

The man fraudulently set up two accounts on cryptocurrency platforms using driver’s licences with the names and details of identity theft victims, alongside his own image.

Chinese and Australian passports that had been reported lost as well as a Medicare card, cryptocurrency exchange cards and a debit card in the names of other people were seized from his property in November 2022 as part of the Australian Federal Police’s (AFP) investigation into scam services site iSpoof.

“The man, 31, was charged following an international investigation into a website selling fraud-enabling technology responsible for more than $1 million being stolen from Australian victims,” the Australian Federal Police said in a statement.

The site’s spoofing services included enabling scammers to make fraudulent calls appear as though they were from legitimate banks, tax offices, and other institutions’ numbers.

The now-shuttered site could also generate one-time PINs to make the scams look more genuine.

Police in the Netherlands - where iSpoof was hosted - discovered the site in 2021. Its London-based operator was arrested in November 2022. The same month, the Metropolitan Police in London notified the AFP about Australians connected to the site.

Another lead that directed the AFP to the Melbourne scammer was “a report of identity theft from an NSW-based victim, which included the creation of a bank account without consent.”

During a November 2022 raid on his Boronia home, the man allegedly refused to surrender the correct access codes to his mobile phone, laptop and tablet device.

However, the AFP said on Friday that evidence could still be extracted from “an encrypted messaging platform” that was “open on the man’s computer” at the time it was seized, including “conversations about identity-based crime.” 

“Instruction manuals on how to create false identity documents were also located on the computer.”

Electronic devices and fabricated identity documents were also seized during simultaneous raids on a property in Brighton and another in Brookfield.