Telecom fraud: how international students are targeted by scammers

Every year, nearly 700,000 international students flock to the UK. Due to a lack of understanding of the UK financial system and laws, international students are particularly vulnerable to these scams, making the UK a hotspot for telecom fraud. A study conducted by UKCISA (UK Council for International Student Affairs) in 2019 found that 41% of international students in the UK reported experiencing some form of financial fraud or scam, while 21% reported identity theft or attempted identity theft.

Is our personal information so unprivate? Yes, it only costs some money. At the end of last year, the Irish News reported that the UK’s largest ever telecoms scam had finally been solved, with an incomplete count of 70,000 victims and over £50 million involved. A website called “iSpoof” was also unearthed as the culprit behind the scam.

This website specifically served scammers who only needed to pay a monthly fee of £5,000 to use the scamming services provided by the website. With the help of the website’s system, scammers could impersonate service representatives from banks such as Barclays, Santander, HSBC, and Lloyds Bank and carry out their criminal activities.

A second year Chinese student at the University of Nottingham, Haoyuan , was scammed out of £4,000 via an Evri text message, told me, “Last June, I received a text message from Evri asking me to pay a shipping fee. At that time, I was playing a game and not paying attention. Coincidentally, I had made an online purchase recently, so I filled in my Monzo bank information.”

Thinking that the matter was settled, she received another text message from Monzo a month later, indicating that someone had used her card for transactions. Within minutes, a person claiming to be a Monzo staff member called her and asked if she had clicked on the link in the previous text message. They explained that it was a fraud and her account was now compromised, so she needed to open a new account in the name of their manager and transfer the money to the new account.

How could prove it wasn’t a scam? The fraudsters claimed they could send an SMS confirmation, and the received message showed it was from Monzo (this was the main reason she fell for it). They also asked if she had other banks using the same phone number and requested Tracy to transfer all her money from HSBC to Monzo and then to the new Monzo card. After a few transfers, Tracy realized something was amiss and stopped transferring. However, the scammers threatened that if she didn’t follow the official banking process, she wouldn’t get her money back and urged her to continue the transfers.

“When I realized it was a scam, I immediately called Monzo customer service, reported the fraud, and requested a new card. Then I called the police, and they instructed me to report the entire scam process in detail on the Action Fraud website. The report would be passed on to the authorities,” she added.

The next morning after being scammed, Monzo customer service asked Haoyuan for more details about the scam and assured her they would try to recover the stolen money. Ten days later, Monzo’s staff asked her for more details about the case, evaluated it, and eventually refunded the money.

According to the official response, the refund was primarily due to providing evidence of the incident’s authenticity. After verifying the recipient’s identity and confirming the purpose of the transfers, the £4,000 was refunded. (Haoyuan provided screenshots of SMS messages, call records, and the main reasons for believing the scammer’s identity.)

“The biggest mistake I made throughout the entire process was the ‘halo effect.’ After all，the ‘official’ SMS and the number contacting you can be forged. ”

This intimidating fraudulent method has been in existence for a long time, and there is a good chance of recovering your assets by promptly contacting the bank and the police. However, on 11 April the Chinese Consulate General in Edinburgh issued a new bulletin warning international students against fraudulent unidentified packages.

The announcement stated that the Consulate General had received reports of several Chinese students being questioned by the police and referred to the court for alleged drug smuggling and abuse offences for receiving unidentified deliveries or receiving, collecting and forwarding unidentified deliveries for a fee. A similar crime was reported in 9News in 2012 when a Chinese student in Australia was sentenced to 18 months in prison for allegedly smuggling drugs. The crime syndicate used international logistics channels to lure international students who lacked awareness and knowledge of the law into receiving or forwarding unknown deliveries and parcels for a small profit but were used by the crime syndicate to participate in or assist them in smuggling drugs.

In addition to drug smuggling, some fraudsters will call you posing as couriers, saying that your delivery from the UK (or other countries) to China has been intercepted and that your personal information has been stolen and you are suspected of being involved in money laundering. You will also be contacted by fake police officers who will give out a lot of relevant personal information to gain trust and induce money transfers.

Social media scams are more likely to be taken lightly than the possibility of receiving an unknown package and being involved in drug smuggling. Many international students who are new to the UK are tempted to exchange small amounts of money for convenience, which gives scammers an opportunity to take advantage of this. They can be found lurking in groups of new students, second-hand groups (Group chat for selling personal idle items at low prices), student groups and so on, sending out messages offering low exchange rates for Chinese yuan.

My friend Yi, a Chinese student in the Curatorial Studies department at the University of York, last summer posted rental information on red book (a Chinese social app). A girl added Yi’s contact information under the pretext of wanting to rent a place and pretended to agree to the rental in order to deceive Yi into providing her bank and student information. Immediately afterwards, she claimed that she needed to buy medicine for her cat in China but didn’t have Chinese currency, so she asked my friend to add her to the second-hand student group to see if anyone could exchange a small amount of money. At that time, my friend was reluctant to add her, so she didn’t respond.

The next day, I saw a post on red book exposing this girl as a scammer (the account matched that of the “fake tenant”). I immediately told my friend to delete this person and privately messaged the student who had been scammed to inquire about the incident. She told me, “In the second-hand group, I saw someone who wanted to exchange £360 for Chinese yuan, with a conversion rate of only 7.7. Originally, I didn’t intend to privately exchange currency for a small benefit, but due to new policy regulations at Starling Bank that restrict cash deposits to £1,000 per year and higher transaction fees for cross-border transfers on Chinese bank cards, I wanted to take this opportunity to exchange some pounds.”

To gain trust, the scammer provided a passport picture, which was actually ID information obtained from someone else under the guise of renting a place. The fraudster also avoided traceable transfer methods like WeChat and Alipay, opting for bank transfers, which made it difficult to file a case (since Chinese law states that fraud cases involving amounts less than ¥3,000 are not eligible for prosecution) and impossible to recover the money. Due to the small amount involved, this has become the most common and easily deceived method targeting international students.

Scammers constantly update their methods and even collaborate with grey industries. Our information on the Internet is no longer private.If you have unfortunately been deceived, please report it to the local police in the first instance and contact your bank to freeze your account. If you are unsure whether the information is from a scammer, it is best to ignore it. After all, if you have really committed illegal acts, the police will find you no matter what.

Feature image by Jamey Spann on insidetelecom.