Sophisticated Platform Used to Scam 170K British Citizens Shut Down

What appeared to be a legitimate cell phone company called Russian Coms has turned out to be nothing but a way for fraudsters to anonymously scam millions of pounds out of unsuspecting Brits—170,000 of them, according to the National Crime Agency (NCA). 

The company has been around since 2021, and gave customers a phone that appeared to be like any commercial cell phone. In reality, the user could pick any “phone number” he wanted to appear to be calling from, making it difficult or impossible for the call recipient to know for sure who was calling. 

The NCA said scammers would program the phones to make it appear that they were calling from recognized and above-board banks and financial institutions and telecom companies. Criminals even posed as cops, using phone numbers from law enforcement agencies to contact their victims. 

Despite the name, Russian Coms was not affiliated with the country or its government. 

The “company” advertised its phones on social media platforms like Snapchat and Instagram, enticing customers with promises of unlimited minutes, and features like “hold music” (do ordinary phone users want hold music, and if so, for what?). The phones themselves were sold for the U.S. equivalent of about $1,500. But while the phones appeared normal, they could really only be used to make what are known as “spoof” calls. These are calls that appear to originate from the displayed number, but do not. 

The NCA said Russian Coms phone users placed 1.3 million calls to 500,000 legitimate UK phone subscribers in the years between 2021 and 2024. 

How it worked

Russian Coms had a web-based application that its criminal customers paid £350 a month to use, and that bill could only be paid in hard-to-trace cryptocurrency. This deluxe offering had software that would alter the user’s voice, making it harder to trace who the scammer actually was. 

Handily for con artists, the phones could also be instantly wiped clean of all data if a user was worried about being caught. 

From there on out, the scams unfolded in the sadly usual way. Con artists would spoof the phone number of a target’s bank and call to tell the customer that her account had been flagged for suspicious activity. To fix the problem, the victim was told, she would need to transfer her money to “another account” to keep it safe. Needless to say, that other account was a criminal’s digital wallet. 

The average financial loss reported to the NCA by victims of Russian Coms scams was almost £10,000.

So far, police have arrested three people including two men in their mid-20s who are believed to have developed the criminal platform.