INTERPOL Arrests 8 in Major Phishing and Romance Fraud Crackdown in West Africa

INTERPOL has announced the arrest of eight individuals in Côte d'Ivoire and Nigeria as part of a crackdown on phishing scams and romance cyber fraud.

Dubbed Operation Contender 2.0, the initiative is designed to tackle cyber-enabled crimes in West Africa, the agency said.

One such threat involved a large-scale phishing scam targeting Swiss citizens that resulted in financial losses to the tune of more than $1.4 million.

The cybercriminals posed as buyers on small advertising websites and used QR codes to direct victims to fraudulent websites that mimicked a legitimate payment platform.

This allowed victims to inadvertently enter personal information such as their credentials or card numbers. The perpetrators also impersonated the unnamed platform's customer service agents over the phone to further deceive them.

As many as 260 scam reports are said to have been received by Swiss authorities between August 2023 and April 2024, prompting a collaborative investigation that traced the roots of the campaign to Côte d'Ivoire.

The main suspect behind the attacks confessed to the scheme and making illicit financial gains of over $1.9 million. Five other individuals conducting cybercriminal activities at the same location have also been arrested.

In a separate case, authorities said it apprehended a suspect and their accomplice in Nigeria on April 27, 2024, in connection with a romance scam after Finnish authorities alerted the Nigerian Police Force via INTERPOL that a victim was scammed out of a "substantial amount of money."

Such financial grooming crimes entail scammers creating fake online identities on dating apps and social media platforms to develop romantic or close relationships with prospective victims, only to steal money from them.

"Leveraging the increased reliance on technology in every aspect of our daily lives, cybercriminals are employing a range of techniques to steal data and execute fraudulent activities," Neal Jetton, Director of the Cybercrime Directorate, said.

"These recent successful collaborations, under the umbrella of Operation Contender 2.0, demonstrate the importance of continued international cooperation in combating cybercrime and bringing perpetrators to justice."

The development comes as the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said a 45-year-old dual citizen of Nigeria and the United Kingdom, Oludayo Kolawole John Adeagbo, has been sentenced to seven years in prison for his role in a multimillion-dollar business email compromise (BEC) scheme.

Adeagbo "conspired with others to participate in multiple cyber-enabled BEC schemes that defrauded a North Carolina university of more than $1.9 million, and attempted to steal more than $3 million from victim entities in Texas, including local government entities, construction companies, and a Houston-area college," the DoJ said.

It also follows an announcement from Meta that it's teaming up with U.K. banks to combat scams on its platforms as part of an information-sharing partnership program dubbed Fraud Intelligence Reciprocal Exchange (FIRE).