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[Music] In North London, the police have had a tip-off and are about to make a dawn raid. Can I just emphasize everybody to wear body armor thereafter? Suspected scammers, cyber crooks, who've stolen money using computers. These individuals have amassed £16,000 from the comfort of their own homes. A growing number of 21st-century criminals who take your bank details and then the money. Previously, if you wanted to amass a large amount of money, you probably had to go and walk into a bank with a shotgun. Your life savings can be gone in seconds. They keep bringing me, and I, it tore our relationship apart. I pleaded with her, and she wouldn't listen to me. I don't want anyone else to walk into what we had.
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[Music] In the West of England. Good morning, Devon and Cornwall Police. How can I help? Police officers are dealing with members of the public who believe they've been scammed. What, they're taking £5,000 from you? Is this just happened now? Has it? Targeted by ruthless criminals who are making billions of pounds every year. Right, may I ask how old you are? Many are having their money stolen because they're old and vulnerable. Okay, well, have they taken it from your bank account? They got me to pin in my PIN numbers. Did you give them any other details? Now, this blog had my name and address. Okay, the actual four-digit numbers that you use for, um, on the cards, and they want me to send them £800 back. Don't, don't, don't entertain it. It's a scam. They keep bringing me. I don't know what to do. You know, I got a lovely family here, and I just, they just keep ringing. You see, the West Country is a favorite retirement destination for pensioners, but it's no longer a safe haven. The scammers have latched onto it too. Devon and Cornwall. Sergeant Bork is on the case. They're using software, they're using, uh, mail merge, all sorts of, uh, technical means by which they just, uh, send, uh, letters and phone people on an absolute industrial scale because it's all about them percentages. They may only, uh, strike lucky on a small percentage of the huge amount of, of mail and phone calls they make, but actually, when they are successful, it can be absolutely devastating to, to the community and the individual. The scammers have even drawn up a list of the best pensioners to target, which has fallen into police hands. It's called a suckers list. Yeah, this is, this is the list given to us by, by Trading Standards. And just looking down at the date of birth, is that a familiar pattern of vulnerability? An elderly, uh, born in '33, born in '31, 1928, 1926. And it's not a coincidence that these people will be a, uh, a victim of this type of scam. It may be mail, it could be telephone calls, it could be on the internet. So we really need to understand how the scammers are arriving at the door. Once you're on the suckers list, you face an onslaught from scammers everywhere with all sorts of crooked schemes, from lotteries and prize draws to miracle cures where the miracles never happen. They're very organized, and they have all the infrastructure we normally associate with a very successful business. Others involve clairvoyants who promise to change your life, or overpriced beauty products and potions that entitle you to enter a draw. Some of them will say they enjoy that daily contact. They enjoy the mail arriving on the door. They really enjoy the phone ringing because that's the only contact they have. There are 35 potential scam victims on Sergeant Bork's patch. First up is Mary. No one knows how her name and details got on the list, but they were probably stolen by criminals here and sold on to others based abroad. I had actually paid the company with regards to, yeah, yeah. And then they took out two lots of money, which was, um, something like, um, £50, £60, and they should have only taken one. Right, so they've got your bank details as well, have they? Yeah. The problem was because that they wanted to do the issue straight away, and I don't normally do it, but I gave the card number. Mary is in danger of losing everything she's worked for, and it's now becoming clear that she is being targeted by scammers masquerading as charities. We, we are aware that there are a number of, um, charities which are not legitimate either as well. So we probably might need to review what, what money you're sending out. But as a priority, what we need to do is you need to change your, your, your bank account details. But, you know, from, from today on in, um, this is where we stop it for you. Um, and hopefully within the wider community. I think it was probably one of my less wise moments. We're fortunate that we've got here at this point in time. It wouldn't be unusual to arrive here in six to eight months whereby all of her funds have been taken by one means or another, and she's caught in that cycle. Sergeant Bork is on a learning curve. This is a different kind of crime than he's used to. The scams, in particular, uh, they bring with it a huge, huge frustration. Historically, we're used to, uh, getting hands on with people, um, arresting our way out of, of a problem. We have to find some very innovative means to, uh, to prevent this type of crime. Innovative means. Getting to know what tricks people are being scammed with. All right, are you in front of your computer right now? Fraudulent computer repair calls. Do you think this, you've won on this one? I know I've won it. Fake letters promising rich pickings. Romance scams. I just try my best to stop her, and she wouldn't listen. And even fake police messages holding kids to ransom. He had to pay. I think it was £100. We, in some cases, see 24,000 crimes every month being reported. It's widely accepted that traditional crimes like robbery, burglary, violent crime, they are decreasing. Um, but actually, there's a significant increase in fraud. It's a huge problem for Sergeant Bork. The problem is directly related to his suckers list and the money the people on it have been giving the scammers. What do you do? Did you send it to a bank account or to? No, I send cards. Right, okay. Yeah. And you just put it in an envelope and send it off. Uh, it's a free post. Okay. Well, what we can say is that that is a scam, and, and it's one of a number of scams we've identified. Can, can we pop inside and take those details for? Devon and Cornwall's anti-scam team. It's been a depressing day. Most of the names on the list have been conned, but thankfully, not all. Your name is on a list now. So what we can, how'd you get my name on the list? Well, you've not sent any money away to anybody. Only things that I've, you know, paid for and received, you know. Okay. Because he says here that you, you've potentially won £18,399. Yeah. I've already matched that. Yeah. So you're under no illusion that you're going to win that money? No. I, no, no, no, no. That's fantasy. And you've not money I've ever had is what I've worked for. No clairvoyance or anything like that. Oh, they, oh, yeah, they let us from them, which I put in the bin. Yeah. Because despite finding one person who hasn't been fooled, Sergeant Bork knows it's the scammers who've come out on top. The figures were really quite alarming. Uh, of these 35 victims, the total, uh, defrauded from them as a result of these scams was in excess of £30,000. Devon and Cornwall's scamming crackdown has been called Operation Jessica. No, but it's an invite to Australia, named after one of the worst cases of postal scamming ever recorded in Britain. Sticker here: "If you've been specially selected." Jessica lost around £50,000. And her daughter, when she fell foul of the postal scammers, "There's nothing I could do. It tore our relationship apart." And do you think this, you've won on this one? I know I've won it. It's believed that every year, at least 380,000 people fall victim to what is called prize mail scams. Surely after four years, and it never comes, you've got to believe. Don't talk about it anymore. I get your jinxing me. I just don't say. Fake letters delivered by post which promise riches beyond belief, provided you send them some money. You think I'm okay? I'm not. I've been doing it too long. The only winners are the scammers, who are almost always based outside the UK and who are now making around £60 million a year. This is an invite to Australia. Jessica Locke was 82 when this video was secretly recorded by her daughter, Marilyn. At the time, she was in the grip of the crooks who were stealing thousands of pounds, subjecting her to a barrage of letters. I took this to show people, even family members, that how powerful and how strong the grip was that they got over my mother. And do you think this, you've won on this one? I know I've won it. Definitely 100%. I've won that. To over a period of five years, Jessica received over 30,000 scamming letters and paid around £50,000 to the criminals behind them. There's an assortment of letters there. My mother was told she had won competitions. She was told that she had been got clairvoyant friends. They were making predictions. She was doing a full-time job. She was opening, reading, sorting, responding. She was writing personal letters to the scammers, apologizing for not having enough money to pay. The whole thing was an absolute nightmare. The scamming Jessica was subjected to cost her all the money she had and her health. I don't want to see you keep sending your money off about me upsetting you. Think about me being upset when I haven't got my much of my life left. Jessica Locke died a broken woman at the age of 83. But for Marilyn, the saddest thing of all is that the scammers destroyed her mother-daughter relationship. "I've been wiping you out for four years." "Shut up now, don't go on about it." "There was nothing I could do. It tore our relationship apart." Um, and I'm in no doubt that receiving 30,000 criminal letters contributed to my mother's death. What happened to her inspired Marilyn to become a campaigner against what is also called mass marketing fraud, and she's now working with the police on Operation Jessica. Hi, good morning. How are you? Yeah, I'm fine, thanks. Okay. After you. She and Sergeant Bork are trying to inspire other officers in Devon and Cornwall to join the fight against the scammers. "Got lovely family here, and I just..." By playing them the voices of the distraught victims who've been calling the control room. "...and they want me to send them £800 back." "Don't, don't, don't entertain it. It's a scout." "They keep bringing me, and I don't know what to do." "All right, just..." "They say I'm going to bring the police here, FBI, and arrest us all." "I just want to know if I've done something." "Actually, nothing wrong. It's a scam." "I mean, if anyone needed any reinforcement as to how important this is, that, for me, really highlights just the impact on the individual." Relatively speaking, that lady's only lost about £80, but the impact on her personally, the fact that she no longer trusts anyone. "If you saw somebody being mugged on the street, you wouldn't have to go up to them and say, 'Excuse me, do you mind if we take the criminal away?' You removed the criminal." And this is the same sort of activity. There is no typical victim. We have victims that are doctors, headmistresses, we've got police officers, an ambassador's wife, bankers, um, somebody who worked in the government. So even though a lot of people are, are categorizing these people as being stupid and idiots and why don't they understand, it's actually the power of the psychology. So powerful that it can get into the minds of anybody. The ability of foreign scammers to get into the minds of anybody by using the Royal Mail is a loophole, one that the National Trading Standard Scam Team based in Eastbourne is looking into. This is all scam that we've taken out of one particular victim's house. So, uh, two bin bags, two bins full, and three bags. And this was done on one visit. Their boss, Louise Baxter, estimates that these kinds of postal scams earn criminals not millions, but billions. The, the figures for this sort of mass marketing fraud is quite staggering. We think anything up to between £5 and £10 billion a year is lost to mass marketing fraud. It's all misleading prize draws, um, misleading lotteries. This, this one is "Enter sweepstakes award here. Additional funds on record that are unclaimed by you. £54,675 to process your winning." But if you do £13.60, 10 times a day for 15 years, then that's going to be a huge amount of money that is lost. Louise commands a unit of just 11 people investigating cases from all over the country. We've obviously got a lot of mail to process. There's 14,000 pieces in the evidence store. We've got a lot of mail sorting ahead of us. In their fight against the postal scammers, the trading standards' hands are tied by law. They are not allowed to intercept the fraudulent mail before it reaches the intended victims. Going back over 300 years, there is a principle of the inviolability of the mail, and there is an absolute principle that once an item of mail, properly paid for, has been entrusted to Royal Mail, it will be delivered. But Marilyn thinks there's an easy solution. The law could be tweaked. All that needs to be done is once these victims are being identified, their mail should then be redirected to a trusted person who will give them back the genuine mail. We want to educate potential victims so that when they get these kind of letters or these phone calls, they recognize them for what they are and they don't respond. They head for the bin. They don't head for the checkbook. These crimes are on, on an industrial scale, and it is the only way to, to stop this is to raise awareness and educate people, and that is the means by which we prevent it. Our aims will be to make North Devon and Devon and Cornwall an area by which the scammers will not target. For most of us, there is no suckers warning list. We're simply not on the police radar, but we are just as vulnerable. The scammers have ways of getting into our private computers and devices while we're at home or asleep by hacking into our Wi-Fi. Lots of people's home routers still on their default settings. It's 9:30 p.m. Birmingham. These guys know how to hack into just about any computer networks. In general, they weren't designed with security in mind. They have special laptops which allow them to detect Wi-Fi routers from the street. A whole bunch of people's home networks. They also let them know whether the owners of the routers have made their devices safe. Three out of four are unencrypted. This time, they're on an exercise for us to find out how many people fail to take the right security measures. Cal Leeming is 27 years old. When he was young, he was a top cyber criminal. From the age of about 12 onwards, I was doing a, a heck of a lot of fraud. I mean, a lot. I mean, like 20, 30 grand a day in some cases. I found a flaw within one of the big banks that allowed me to process any payment for any amount up to their given credit limit without hitting any security, uh, market, any security flags, any security checks. Could walk into a store, pick up the item, and it would all go fine. And, uh, that flaw still exists today. When he was 18, Cal Leeming's life as a scammer came to an abrupt end. He got caught. He was one of Britain's most prolific hackers ever. Even though no one, including Cal, was able to put a finger on exactly how much money he had stolen. I couldn't honestly say how much it was. So they asked me to think for a figure, and I said it's probably somewhere under a million. When I went to prison, I made a conscious decision to change my life. I was adamant that I wasn't going to be doing any more crime, any more fraud, any more anything. Now, I am a software engineer. I like to learn. I like to do a proper job. Darren Martin is 22. He also routinely broke the law as a teenager. Oh, wow. Somebody's television, smart TV, LG. As a member of a worldwide gang of hackers called Anonymous. Caught by the FBI using the code name Lulz. Those arrests strike, strike at the very core of the international hackers' network. Anonymous and its offshoot cyber gang Lulz. Lulz is accused of hacking the websites of Sony Pictures, Fox, and PBS, often leaving behind this victory message. For like, 16, 17-year-old, it was like, instead of going out and getting up to devilment, he'd poke around in websites, other people's computers. It was curiosity. His youthful curiosity landed Darren in trouble, but not jail. I wasn't trying to rip off credit cards or anything. I was a misguided teenager who got in a bit of bother. But the misguided teenager did leak confidential information to the world. Innocent people got scammed. Collectively, as a group, we leaked hundreds of thousands of people's email addresses and passwords. They were the ones who got hurt in the end. They were the ones who received loads of spam, whose email addresses were borrowed by criminals, used for all sorts of nefarious things. Darren and Cal no longer do nefarious things. They're now going straight, working in cybersecurity, trying to stop criminals with the same sort of unique skills from hacking their way into our Wi-Fi. Well, we're actually seeing a lot of Sky's and TalkTalks and BTs. We are deep within residential right now. This exercise could be carried out by real scammers with actual criminal intent. We both use the same tools, same techniques. Our job is to try and make things safer by highlighting the flaws before criminals get to them. We have an open CCTV network here. Oh, Christ. John, this is an open network. Means the Wi-Fi router, it's on, hasn't been given a password. It can be hacked by anyone within 100 meters or so. Wi-Fi doesn't stop at our front doors. Our boys call Wi-Fi signal needing passwords. Encryption still a 50/50 mix of encryption, yes, and encryption, no. Um, we're seeing lots of people's home routers. I think what really gets me out of all of it is that people immediately assume that Wi-Fi is secure. I could intercept every bit of wireless traffic that I happen to, that crosses my wireless card, which is everything within about 100 meters range. That'd be illegal, though. It'd fall under the Wireless Telegraphy Act. So don't do it. One of Darren Martin's laptops has a special cyber program which maps every Wi-Fi in the street. They're in green means secure, red open to attack. A dangerous tool in the wrong hands. What we're finding is that about half of them have the encryption disabled, which means that all the data flowing over these people's home networks is open for the world to listen in on. Listening in enables cyber criminals to steal your personal financial details, money. For criminals, this would be in whatever they can monetize, be it credit card details, other things such as logins to accounts, whatever they can convert to cash, they will. They're interested solely in making money the easiest way possible. Darren and Cal want to persuade everyone to create and use proper Wi-Fi passwords. They now work for computer software security firms as ethical hackers. Using ethical hackers is not just a good idea, it's essential. The offenders themselves are at the very front end, and they're developing new ways every day to try and hurt victims. And we absolutely would like to work in partnership with people who want to be legitimate, who want to make a positive difference, and share their ideas to help us improve the way we protect victims. It's almost a 50/50 split between encrypted and unencrypted. Crime is not going to go away. I mean, no amount of stricter laws are going to stop it. The only way we can improve is if end users start looking after themselves, and companies start being made completely responsible for the loss of information. Making people responsible would be good news for the victims of our next con. Now, are you in front of your computer right now? The so-called Microsoft scam. I feel such a fool. I really do. Every year in Britain, millions of us are taken in by the scammers. Increasingly, we are being snared by fake emails which contain computer viruses, cleverly designed by criminals to look like the real thing from banks or large corporations, sometimes offering rewards or large sums of cash. The scam begins when we click. Many people don't understand the negative implication of downloading the email and what harm that could cause. And the harm it could cause is it putting a virus on your computer, record everything you do, and literally steal your identity. Stopping people from stealing our identities is what our ethical hackers, Cal and Darren, are all about. We've got this one. It's from the FBI, and they're the anti-terrorist, uh, Montre Crimes Division of the FBI. And it even, it's got a spoofed sender that is FBI alert, fbi.gov. Here, we've got the FBI director, James B. Comey. He's like the director of intelligence, isn't he? The head of the FBI. And it's telling me we caught a diplomatic lady with a consignment box of US dollars that belongs to me. Well, I quite like a box of diplomatic dollars. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe people do fall for this. Well, it's got to work because otherwise, if it didn't work, they wouldn't be doing these. These are emails sent fraudulently, and the whole trick is they get you to open them. And most of them are way too good to be true. But the large sums of money they offer, they immediately reel you in, and a lot of people fall for them. It's thought that at least seven people are scammed in the UK every minute of every day, and cybercrime is costing Britain £27 billion a year. It's claiming to be from fbi.gov, but it actually came from goo.jp, which is some hacked mail server in Japan. These viruses take control of your computer, so you lose complete control. Um, and so when you use your machine at home, it's being watched by someone, you know, thousands of miles away, as if they were just standing behind your shoulder. If you get like an email from a sender you don't recognize, or an unexpected email from a sender you don't recognize, don't click on it. Um, use common sense. In North Yorkshire, more people are being scammed, and this time, common sense is difficult to apply. Now, are you in front of your computer right now? Organized cybercrime gangs from outside the UK. This is CH. Are targeting British computer owners at home, claiming they're from tech support at Microsoft. There would be some person who must have hacked into your system. A con that is being investigated by the National Trading Standards e-crime Unit. Cybercrime is definitely on the increase. Previously, if you wanted to, to amass a large amount of money, you probably had to go and walk into a bank with a shotgun, hold the bank up, and, and walk away with a large amount of cash. Is that the entire 10,000 emails then on those five clusters? But now you can set up a website, uh, scam lots and lots of consumers for a relatively small sum of money. Over 100,000 consumers have been affected by some of the scams we look at last year. The real Microsoft said it had received more than 65,000 complaints about this kind of tech support scam. Okay, then, what I'm going to do is I'm going to draft up a statement on the basis of what you've said, if that's okay. Catching those responsible is hard and rare. This is Muhammad Jam. He specializes in this cybercrime, nicknamed the Microsoft scam. He's part of a global gang which, it's believed, has made millions of pounds pretending to be Microsoft engineers when they aren't. All right, sir. I got your details. Your name is Mr. Unsuspecting computer owners are called at random and told that they have a problem with their machine or software. But it's okay because tech support is able to help. The reason we had called you because your system had didn't had any proper security. It usually starts with a phone call at home. Don't worry, we will sort everything for you. The consumer will get a call from somebody claiming to be working for Microsoft or with Microsoft, or that they're Microsoft certified. And just give me 10 minutes. I will just finish the work on your system. The scam is that crooks persuade the user with the non-existent problem to pay them a fee for the remote assistance. Money for nothing. This is a typical example of kind of the, the, the whole process that they go through to try and make the consumer think that they're actually dealing with a problem, fixing an issue. Now, on your desktop, you will see a TeamViewer 7 icon. Just double-click on that. And what they're really trying to do is actually get you to give over control of your PC, steal your identity, um, look for personal private information that might be on the computer, and at the end of it, um, obviously they're trying to get some money off you to pay for the service. Mike's mission to track down the masterminds behind these service scams means he spends a lot of time on the road meeting the victims who've been robbed. This is absolutely key to the case. There's lots of other work that goes into the investigation, the work that we do in our digital evidence unit, the work our internet investigators do, but ultimately, we also need to get statements from consumers who have been scammed, because they're the ones that have been the victim of the crime, and it's important that we get firsthand their account and their experiences.
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Edith is a widow from Leicester whose greatest pleasure these days is gardening and her PC. I enjoy using my computer. I, I look at least three or four times a week, and I send emails, use it for Facebook. For Edith, it's her best way of staying in touch with friends and family. Oh, that was taken in Scotland, that picture was. It's not a bad picture, is it? She got caught by Muhammad Jam last year. I was sitting at my computer, which was actually giving me quite a bit of trouble at the time, and the telephone rang, and I answered it, and it was an Asian man who said he was from Microsoft. All right, are you in front of your computer right now? And he could get things fixed for me. In fact, there was nothing wrong with Edith's computer. As usual, it was just running slowly. And this went down for about 20 minutes. Oh, it's not to worry, not to worry, we will help you out. And then at the end of the 20 minutes, it suddenly went through my mind, I'm sure I've got to pay for this. And then he told me he could do a two-year plan, and it would cost £154.95. They couldn't accept a credit card, it would be a debit card. It would be needed to use, which I did. It was 10 minutes or so after when I come off the phone that I thought, I'm a bit unhappy about this. And that's when I got in touch with my bank. But it was too late. Edith's money had already been taken. I did do the wrong thing by giving my debit card, 'cause my money was taken out straight away within minutes, and I feel such a fool. I really do. I thought I'd got common sense, but hadn't got enough. Some consumers are very, very angry. Some feel, um, almost stupid that they've been a victim of a scam. But actually, that's far from it, because it, it is very, very easy to fall victim of some of these types of online scams, and it's important that we talk them through that process and give them the confidence to be able to give a good account of themselves and a witness statement. We're investigating the company, and we want to go through some questions with you. When people in the Microsoft scam case get the initial telephone call, they're quite freaked out because obviously, if they think there's a problem with their computer, they think it's going to cost thousands of pounds to rectify. Uh, so the fact that these people are on the phone saying, "We can deal with it here and now if you give us access," I think people, because they're worried about the future consequences, give them access. Because most of Jam's scam gang were abroad, they thought they were safe from the British authorities. But this wasn't the case. If we're having difficulty tracking people down, the best way is always to follow the money. The money led first to the High Street banks in the City of London, then onwards to Dubai, then to India, where the scammers used call centers. But behind Jam had a house in Bedfordshire. We were able to go and conduct a search warrant at, uh, Mr. Jam's home premises. Agency open the door, and during that warrant, we seized a large amount of evidence, including his laptop and various other items, which were then brought back, uh, and examined in our digital evidence unit. I'm just checking through this. The, the case notes. Is this one of the laptops? It is. When they got the laptop back to the lab, they made an unusual discovery. You'd be surprised what the, uh, what the analysts do find. They find, they find everything if it's on the desk. Jam had secretly recorded the crimes he had committed, including the voices of the victims. "Had so many calls, and I'm in such a mix-up with this. He's very, very confused. He doesn't understand what's going on. There's all sorts of processes and windows open on his computer, and he, he, he really is lost." "Am I speaking to somebody in London, by the way?" "Yes." "They try and make it sound like it's a UK-based operation, but actually, it's been run from a call center in India." "I've paid an £83.45 tonight, and I've paid £54.95 for two years' cover." "All right, just hold on, sir. I don't know what's going on, uh, Chris. I really don't, but I feel I'm in a bit of a mess here." "All right, so not to worry, not to worry. We will help you out. Don't get pensive." Clearly demonstrates the, the, the tactics that they use. When you're on the phone, are you, are you with Smart Support guys? Just hold on, sir. It's very, very good to have consumer statements because obviously that's the firsthand account of what happened. But to actually have a live recording, um, that backs up what the consumer's saying, is really, really crucial evidence. The live recordings were not enough to send Muhammad Jam to jail. When he appeared in court and pleaded guilty to unfair trading, he received a suspended sentence. The judge also ordered him to repay the money he had scammed from Edith and 40 others, more than £55,000. It was the first successful prosecution of its kind. Knowing that you've caught somebody, uh, and prevented them from actually being able to scam more money from more consumers, is, is very, very satisfying. But Edith isn't that satisfied. Even though she got her money back, she doesn't believe Jam's punishment fitted his crime. It's cost me a lot of heartache and upset, but I'm just pleased to say that I got the money. I worked hard for that money, and I don't see why the scammer should get it. What annoyed me was he had a suspended sentence, and he didn't deserve that. He deserved to go to prison as well as paying people. To make matters worse, Edith is still in the grip of the scammers. They still ring me, and I feel unsafe answering the phone because I, I feel that I, I'm not comfortable when I answer the phone today because I'm still getting calls. I have had two last week. The cruelty of Britain's scammers knows no bounds. To me, he sounded so genuine. And the worst crime of all is a killer. Maybe this can stop this happening to somebody else.
Throughout the days, when it comes to true love, the scammers have no mercy, especially where social media and online dating is concerned. Last year in the UK, almost 3,000 lonely people fell for what are called romance scams. According to the police, on average, it cost each of them around £12,000. But one victim has lost far more than that. "Cuz I am happy to have a wonderful honey like you forever. We are, and then how it always show be, as I am yours, devoted to you." At the age of 57, Barbara fell in love online with a man calling himself Perry Johnson. It makes me feel good when he talks. He gives me all this lovey-dovey sort of talk. She's been dating him for more than four years. They've never met. A photo on her phone is all she has. She's given him more than £180,000. He told me he was a, he was a French guy, um, he lived in Paris, just outside Paris, and he had a five-bedroom house in Paris. And because he just lost, but because he lost his wife a few years previous and lost his children also, he wanted to start a new life. There was a text to me saying he was in a major accident, and his car was in a, um, in fire, and he was in a coma, and the person next to him just died in the car fire, and he was pulled out and taken to the hospital. I thought I was doing him a good, good deed by helping him. But, um, but then he says he's going to pay me back. So I really don't know what to believe. Barbara's daughter was shocked when she found out what was going on. I knew it wasn't true from the beginning. I knew he was a con man, and I, I knew it was all fake. But no matter what I did, I pleaded with her, and she wouldn't listen to me. And then when I found out she'd given him money, she just gave him more money. And I told her, and I, and she, I just tried my best to stop her, and she wouldn't listen. Perry courted Barbara with emails and texts. Must have been about good two or three years before he asked me for any money. Just progressed really, like thousands at a time, until eventually it was about £180,000. It was all going on behind my back. Even after I told her to stop giving him money when I found out first of all that she'd given him money. So instead of stopping giving the money, she just gave him more. He would send me all these pictures of him, which obviously I thought were genuine, but even today, I still think they're genuine, but I don't know. He never would Skype or anything like that where you can have face-to-face conversation. He wouldn't do it. He would always make some excuse. But Mom, surely you must know they're fake? To look at them, that doesn't even look natural. That's not a photo that somebody would really take. Because the man claiming to be Perry is now in West Africa. There's little her local police force can do, though they say an investigation is ongoing. But here in Coventry, at the University of Warwick, a specialist cybercrime unit is able to help. Professor Kasten Maple uses facial recognition software to track down the identities of scammers or the people they impersonate. Here on this website, it's showing a number of different scams where the same picture has been used of one person, but for multiple identities for scamming purposes. What I'm going to do is save this image as. So you can just save image as. Okay. So this is Google Image Search, and I'm going to choose the image that we've just downloaded. So we've got 43 results for that one image. If we look, this picture is used in a number of different cases. So you can see here, there's a complete list here. We're at 60, 70, 80, 904 different email accounts that that picture is claiming to have the email address for. The picture sent to Barbara is not of Perry Johnson. It's someone else. When you trace the face online, you find a model agency in Hawaii and a man with a different name. Yeah, that's definitely me. No, I just have one of those faces that a lot of people come up to me and they'll say something like, "Wow, wow, I know you from somewhere," or "You remind me of somewhere." People across the world that are using my pictures to further themselves in relationships. You know, that's just, that's just unforgiving kind of stuff. That's that's just not right, and you know, it needs to come to an end. Here, Professor Maple believes the scammer who stole Rick's identity is probably from Lagos. The kind of mass marketing fraud that goes on, those so-called romance scams, very often are coming out of Africa, where they've got that skill in developing fake profiles. They would go on to some internet dating site, for example, and they would target lots and lots of people. Barbara's online romance with Perry has all but bankrupted her. I have to be renting there for the rest of my life. I have to get a job, and I'm 61 now, so it's going to be more difficult. So, um, what we should remember is that nearly all of these victims have been looking for somebody. They've had hopes built up, and that's all taken away. As well as the financial damage, there's an emotional damage. They feel embarrassed. They shouldn't be. This is a very complex kind of scam. Open the door. The police. The war between the police and the cybercriminals is growing in intensity, but the scammers who are able to fool people with fake websites and emails are now using the fear of the police to make millions by mocking up law enforcement notices. They have cost at least one young man his life. Joseph Edwards was just 17 when he fell for what's called a ransomware scam. A popup payment demand from what looked like a police e-crime unit. He'd committed a serious offense, and his laptop would be frozen until he paid. Joseph lived in Berkshire, near Windsor Castle. This is his mom, Jackie, and elder sister, Georgia. Looks cheeky. He was, he was a very smiley baby, little cheeks. When he was two and a half, Joseph was diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder, but he was determined it would not define him. His autism didn't affect everything in his day-to-day life. Um, he was at mainstream school, had support in the early years at mainstream school, but he didn't want the support at Winter Boy. He wanted to be like the other children, so he did not want to be made to be different. Different. I think his friends would describe him as, as, as funny. I think he was far more popular than what he realized. On the morning of the 6th of August 2014, Joseph, now 17, was still in bed when his mom left for work. I woke him up, and he did reply, and I'd ask him to ho her up, and I'd let the dog out throughout the day, and I would see him later. I'd also, uh, put dinner on before I'd left her work in the slow cooker, done one of his favorites, spaghetti bolognese, and I said, "I'll see him later." I got home about, um, 10 to six at night, and I opened the door, and the cupboard door at the bottom of the stairs was open, and Joseph's back was to me. The post was on the floor, and I was quite annoyed that he had had picked the post up. And as I started to walk up the hallway, I could see the legs of one of the chairs, um, in the doorway, and I saw some blood and coming out of his nose and mouth, and I knew then that something was wrong. Joseph left a note. He told his mom he was in trouble with the police, even though he'd done done nothing wrong. His laptop was blocked, and he had to pay a fine. And it said that he had been visiting legal websites, and this went on to say about child pornography and terrorism, and that he had to pay, I think it was £100, or face prosecution within 72 hours had, um, he not paid it. Made me feel angry, um, upset that Joseph would have been, didn't believe that. But he had autism, so he would have had literal meaning, and he did live by the rules. Joseph was quite, he'd only ever broken school rules once in the whole time he was at school, so he would have believed it. Fake blocking notices like the one Joseph received are good enough to fool some, but not Professor Maple, who knows exactly how these ransomware scams are put together by the crooks. What we have here is, um, a notification supposedly from the Police Central e-crime Unit. You can see here that they've used the logo. That is the logo for the Police Central e-crime Unit. They've taken the Metropolitan Police logo. Well, of course, that's easy enough to get from the internet anywhere. Here it says that it is child porno, not child pornography, but child porno, zilia, etc. So it's poorly written, but it's enough to get some people, people to be scared about what the consequences might be. It threatens here that you could be fined up to £100,000 and/or imprisoned for between four and nine years. The police have taken Joseph's laptop away for further analysis, but there is as yet no clue as to who is behind the scam, other than it was almost certainly an organized crime gang. They are to be taken seriously. Okay, they're only asking for £100, but some people will pay this £100 and some people will pay and believe it, and maybe not have the money, or believe that they are in a lot of trouble, and that they are going to be prosecuted and arrested, and end up doing what my son has done. I'm realistic in believing they may not find the source because I've been told it's probably, um, from abroad. So in reality, yes, they may never find the source of the crime. But for me, with the laptop being looked at, and public awareness, maybe this can stop this happening to somebody else. I don't want anyone else to walk into what we had to witness that day. Joseph was just one of 4 million Britons who reported being scammed last year. Police, as the police continue to go after the scammers, it's now certain that this year the numbers of victims will be far higher, and their stories even more harrowing. It's an arms race right between the criminals and the law enforcement agencies, but the criminals are morphing their techniques much more rapidly, and there's a growing base of criminals.
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Curry, Sophie, Webster, Brook, Vincent, and Rochelle and Marvin Humes are on Celebrity Juice on ITV2. Next on ITV Encore, age is no barrier to romance. Helen McCrory stars in. Leaving next Monday's ITV News at 10.