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Seized luxury goods reveal scale of UK text scams
Text scammers make tens of thousands a month - and spend it on designer shoes and bags
They don't keep money, they spend it here and now.
Det Ch Insp Paul Curtis is showing us around an evidence room piled high with designer shoes and handbags. Thousands of items are neatly stacked in plastic containers on wooden shelves.
The items here have been seized from financial fraudsters, some of whom send scam texts - known as smishing - to victims.
"They like to live a lavish lifestyle," says Curtis. "We have got somewhere between 8,500 and 10,000 items of evidence in this one room," he says, something that is "the result of house searches and raids" carried out by officers.
The smell of fresh leather goods pervades the air. Brightly coloured Gucci stilettos catch the eye from a distance; it's a treasure trove of top-label kit worth tens of thousands of pounds.
These purchases are an indication of how much cash they're making from their crimes and what they're spending it on.
The term "smishing" is a combination of "SMS", or "short message service" - the technology behind text messages - and "phishing".
Fraudsters send fake text messages - apparently from a bank or other trusted company - to trick people into disclosing personal information such as passwords and Pin numbers. The intention is to defraud them out of their money.
Curtis is part of the Dedicated Card and Payment Crime Unit - a team made up of officers from the City of London Police and the Metropolitan Police service.
Although they're London police forces, the unit has a national remit, and is sponsored by the banking industry. It focuses on combating financial fraud.
"In a recent smishing case of ours, the defendant was sentenced on the basis of sending 15,000 messages in a five day period. That equated to making a hundred thousand pounds a month," he says.
The senior officer was talking about Ruichen Xiong, a student from China who was convicted of the crime after driving around London in March of this year, sending messages to tens of thousands of potential victims.
Xiong was sentenced to 58 weeks in prison at Inner London Crown Court in June after pleading guilty to fraud by representation.
According to Ofcom, half of UK mobile users said they received a suspicious message between November 2024 and February 2025 via text or iMessage.
Gideon Rabinowitz, 64, lives in Newbury, Berkshire, and is a recent victim of smishing.
Just two months ago, the former IT manager said he was cheated out of more than a thousand pounds after receiving a fraudulent text message.
"I felt like a massive fool, like I'd been violated," he says.
It really shook me. For a number of days after it really left me quite shaken. I felt very vulnerable and I don't know who to trust now.
Mr Rabinowitz was led to believe he was being contacted by his bank who were reporting a suspicious payment on his account.
In reality, he was being messaged by a scammer.
It started with a text out of the blue asking if I recognised a transaction - yes or no. Two and half hours later I was out of pocket by £1400.
He adds: "In part it was about the money and it was also this feeling of being defrauded, of being looked up, because these people knew who I was. They knew where I live".
Scam text messages often pretend to be from large companies such as utility companies, banks or supermarkets. They usually include a link. Once the person clicks on it, they can be sent to a fraudulent website and asked for personal and financial information. The information can then be used to convince them to transfer money from their account.
Smishing is primarily done through two devices; a Sim farm which holds multiple Sim cards, allowing criminals to bombard people with thousands of scam texts.
The second is what's called an SMS Blaster. It tricks mobiles nearby into connecting with it, and then sends large numbers of fraudulent texts in a matter of seconds.
The government says "smishing scams have a devastating impact on their victims".
"Our Telecoms Charter sets out clear action to secure SMS and reduce fraud across the telecoms sector".
"We are also banning Sim farms. Banning these devices used to send thousands of scam texts will close down a key tool for criminals and safeguard consumers," it says.
The ban is expected to come into effect late next year. It will make the possession or supply of Sim farms, without a specified reason, illegal.
One cyber expert said smishing was a difficult crime to solve and that there needs to be more education around fraudulent text messages.
"Smishing in and of itself is very hard to police because a lot of it comes from abroad and, even when it's done from within the UK it's very easy to do and hard to trace, " says Ciaran Martin, the former Chief Executive of the National Cyber Security Centre.
"So while the police can sometimes take down big operations, we shouldn't look to the police as the strategic answer for this.
"The strategic answer is for people to understand that serious businesses don't ask you for money by text, and for businesses to find better ways of interacting with customers and verifying that interaction".
The advice from police is simple: do not click on the links in any unsolicited messages you receive.
If you believe you're a victim of fraud, report to Action Fraud, report to your bank, and forward the message to 7726 so the mobile networks can investigate further.
Additional reporting by Kris Bramwell.
For more information go to bbc.co.uk/scamsafe where you can find a selection of resources
If you have been scammed or defrauded, details of help and support are available at bbc.co.uk/actionline
Source: BBC
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