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The UK's National Crime Agency charged five London residents on July 13 over Russian Coms, a caller ID spoofing platform used to make more than 1.8 million scam calls. The five face charges tied to supplying the service and laundering the money it earned.
Those charged are Ayoub Sehailia, 28; Zakkaria Sehailia, 30; Usman Din, 30; Denis Ozmus, 29; and Fadila Salem, 53. All are from London. The charges include conspiracy to supply articles for use in connection with fraud, and transferring or converting criminal property. Zakkaria Sehailia also faces a charge of failing to hand over phone passcodes when required.
Russian Coms began in 2020 as a handset and later moved to a web-based app, with both versions sold to criminals. It let users hide their identity and appear to call from numbers chosen in advance. Callers often posed as banks, telecom firms, and law enforcement to win trust, then pushed victims to move money to accounts the fraudsters controlled. Scammers would claim a victim's account was under threat and urge an urgent transfer to a supposedly safe one.
The platform has been linked to about 170,000 victims and tens of millions of pounds in losses since 2020. When the NCA first took it down in March 2024, investigators said criminals had used it to make 1.3 million calls to 500,000 numbers across more than 107 countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Norway, and France. Average losses topped £9,400. Users paid £1,200 to £1,400 in cryptocurrency for six-month contracts that offered encrypted calls, voice changing, and instant handset wipes.
The service was promoted on Telegram, Snapchat, and Instagram. Its 2024 takedown formed part of Operation Henhouse, a wider fraud crackdown that produced 290 arrests across England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Number spoofing remains a common thread in impersonation fraud, where a trusted name on a screen is often enough to start the con.
All five defendants are due at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Friday, August 14.
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