Interpol and Afripol: 1006 cyber criminals arrested in Operation Serengeti
More than 1,000 arrests were made during the Serengeti law enforcement operation – a joint operation by Afripol and Interpol.
(Image: Interpol)
In the joint "Operation Serengeti" by Interpol and Afripol, law enforcement officers in 19 African countries have arrested 1006 suspected cyber criminals. In the process, they dismantled 134,089 criminal networks. The operation ran from September 2 to October 31 of this year. National authorities and private partners supported the operation with important information and resources.
The investigations focused on cybercrime such as ransomware, phishing and online fraud, Interpol writes about the operation. More than 35,000 victims were identified. The global losses amounted to almost 193 million US dollars. Nevertheless, the officers were able to recover almost 44 million US dollars.
Several cases successfully solved
In Kenya, for example, law enforcement officers were able to solve a case of online credit card fraud that resulted in losses of 8.6 million US dollars for the victims. Using fraudulent scripts that ran after manipulating the security protocol of the banking system, the stolen money was moved via SWIFT to companies in the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria and China, to digital asset management institutions. Almost two dozen arrests have been made so far.
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In Senegal, eight people, including five Chinese nationals, were arrested for a Ponzi scheme that defrauded 1811 victims of 6 million US dollars. A search of their homes uncovered 900 SIM cards, 11,000 US dollars in cash, phones, laptops and copies of victims' identity documents (ID cards).
Operation Serengeti was carried out with funding from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the German Foreign Office and the Council of Europe. Law enforcement officers were involved from Algeria, Angola, Benin, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, CĂ´te d'Ivoire, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Support also came from the private sector, with the companies Cybercrime Atlas, Fortinet, Group-IB, Kaspersky, Team Cymru, Trend Micro and Uppsala Security assisting and supporting the investigation, writes Interpol.
Online criminals should not feel too safe. Time and again, international law enforcement agencies have managed to strike serious blows against criminal organizations. In May, for example, it became known that Europol had uncovered twelve fraudulent call centers that had ripped off their victims with supposed crypto investments.
(dmk)
