student and scammer Ruichen Xiong has been sentenced to 58 weeks in prison for using a portable phone mast to blitz every nearby mobile phone with scam texts from the taxman.
Between Mar 22 and 27 this year, Xiong drove around the Greater London area in his black Honda CR-V with the “SMS blaster” in the boot. It then sent mass “smishing” messages to tens of thousands of potential victims to obtain their confidential private or banking details.
Handsets of passers-by were tricked into connecting with Xiong’s fake device on a 2G network — which appeared to have a stronger signal — instead of legitimate phone towers.
As police went to arrest Xiong in east London, an officer’s phone received a text claiming to be from HM Revenue and Customs asking him for details to process a refund.
Xiong was caught by the Dedicated Card and Payment Crime Unit, a collaboration between UK Finance and the City of London and Metropolitan Police forces. They worked with operators including BT, Virgin Media O2, Vodafone, Three and Sky as well as the National Cyber Security Centre and Ofcom.
standard.co.uk/news/crime/met
ukfinance.org.uk/news-and-insig