THE METROPOLITAN POLICE have arrested six people after simultaneous morning raids on houses in London and Navan, Co Meath.
The co-ordinated raids were undertaken as part of an ongoing investigation into an online banking swindle in Britain.
The six arrested – five men and one woman, all of whom remain unnamed – are accused of stealing £358,000 (€432,000) from over ten thousand bank accounts, and at least another £3 million (€3.62m) from another ten thousands credit cards.
The gang are also believed to be behind attempts to steal another £1.14 million (€1.37m) from online bank accounts, from both online current accounts and through services like PayPal.
They are currently being held for questioning in London.
A statement for the Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) said the arrests formed part of a larger operation – ‘Operation Dynamaphone’ – clamping down on “systematically obtained large quantities of personal information”.
PCeU Detective Inspector Colin Wetherill said:
We have taken this action to shut down an organised criminal network running an online phishing and account take-over operation.
A great deal of personal information was compromised and cleverly exploited for substantial profit. By disrupting the operation we have hopefully prevented further loss to individuals and institutions across the UK.
The raid is unusual in that online-only crime gangs are traditionally associated with non-EU countries where computer misuse laws are commonly far weaker.
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