A few years ago I created the Scam-O-Matic (www.scamomatic.com), a website that every month has helped thousands of people worldwide by automatically diagnosing online fraud emails that people have submitted to it. Scamomatic.com recognizes fake lotteries, “dead customer” scams, “dying widow” scams and many other common formats from scammers from Nigeria that you may have seen in your inbox before. Even when it can’t pinpoint the exact type of scam, it often recognizes it as a generic scam format, largely thanks to the presence in the email of UK phone numbers that start with +44 70. These numbers are everywhere in Nigerian online scams, regardless of the precise scam format. The +44 70 prefix might as well be called the country code of Nigerian scammers.
If you receive any email that mentions any +4470 phone number, do not reply to it! You can submit the body of any suspicious email message to www.scamomatic.com for instant feedback about what kind of scam it might be.
These +4470 numbers are a gift to online scammers by British phone regulators. They are primarily owned by obscure British phone companies offering an anonymous call forwarding service. The economic model of these services is simple: The caller dials a rather expensive UK number and the UK service provider forwards the incoming call to a somewhat less expensive to call international number (for example a Nigerian mobile phone, which remains hidden from the caller), pocketing the difference between the call rates. For example, the caller might pay 50 cents per minute to call a +44 70 number and the call will then be forwarded to a Nigerian mobile phone that costs 25 cents per minute, leaving 25 cents per minute as a net margin for the service operator. The more successful the scammers are, the more money the phone company makes. Who ever said crime doesn’t pay?
These UK phone numbers are very attractive to scammers: When people can be made to believe that they are dealing with a bank, lawyer or government official in London, UK when they’re actually talking to a scammer on his cell phone in an Internet cafe in Lagos, Nigeria then they are much more easily defrauded by criminals.
As far as I can tell these numbers aren’t really being used for any other purpose than to enable international online crimes to be committed. In some nine years of tracking Nigerian scam emails, I have yet to come across a single legitimate user of a +44 70 number. I really don’t understand why the British government has allowed those services to continue to operate.
Now, of course the service operators can claim that they don’t know that their services are being used for criminal purposes unless someone tells them about it. On the other hand, they are not exactly making it easy to report abuse and the high prices of these services means that it’s unlikely that they’ll get much legitimate use, if any.
There are several ways to curb abuse, other than suspending +44 70 numbers altogether and I would encourage the UK government to seriously consider them:
- The UK regulators could make it a requirement that calls via this service either originate in the UK or terminate in the UK, i.e. to prevent unrestricted global relaying, with say calls from India or the US being forwarded to Nigeria or Côte d’Ivoire.
- The UK regulators could require service providers to announce the country name of the phone number to which the call is being forwarded if the destination number is not a UK number.
- The UK regulators could require service providers to block forwarding to mobile phone numbers in certain countries, e.g. Nigeria
Below is a sample list of +44 70 numbers that appeared in Nigerian scams reported to Scam-O-Matic over the course of the last seven days. These roughly 60 phone numbers per day are only the tip of the iceberg:
+447005801505
+447005802020
+447005810692
+447005934945
+447005942459
+447005963237
+447005977097
+447006001100
+447006002121
+447006002413
+447006029116
+447006062478
+447010023307
+447010027439
+447010027978
+447010027983
+447010028455
+447010030769
+447010285923
+447010306559
+447010476294
+447010786457
+447011120379
+447011120510
+447011120524
+447011121450
+447011121596
+447011128170
+447011129280
+447011129286
+447011129446
+447011130062
+447011130670
+447011130769
+447011131077
+447011131152
+447011133259
+447011140499
+447011140945
+447011140989
+447011146747
+447011146830
+447011147295
+447011149054
+447011152991
+447011153129
+447011162749
+447011163186
+447011163846
+447011164243
+447011182522
+447011183455
+447011184113
+447011196412
+447011197245
+447011197787
+447014225697
+447014232391
+447014232411
+447014232442
+447014236733
+447014244984
+447014275175
+447014275728
+447017026507
+447017430128
+447017769494
+447017848035
+447023011587
+447023056559
+447023058575
+447023069806
+447023086665
+447023087509
+447023092593
+447024010876
+447024010915
+447024011554
+447024012660
+447024013770
+447024014859
+447024016712
+447024017968
+447024018504
+447024018707
+447024018725
+447024018963
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+447024019588
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+447024023643
+447024024530
+447024024914
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+447024025942
+447024028606
+447024029852
+447024032255
+447024033542
+447024034362
+447024034768
+447024035958
+447024036606
+447024037907
+447024038051
+447024038950
+447024041571
+447024041989
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+447024043571
+447024045842
+447024046548
+447024047607
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+447024080634
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+447024087401
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+447024091678
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+447024099606
+447031740924
+447031742574
+447031744227
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+447031746067
+447031746887
+447031747046
+447031747509
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+447031801246
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+447031803498
+447031803820
+447031808512
+447031809778
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+447031814720
+447031815436
+447031816735
+447031818230
+447031821851
+447031822608
+447031823431
+447031824330
+447031825003
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+447031830878
+447031833248
+447031833760
+447031834660
+447031835615
+447031835762
+447031837227
+447031843396
+447031844360
+447031845639
+447031846542
+447031850801
+447031851126
+447031855107
+447031855527
+447031858919
+447031859268
+447031859327
+447031859972
+447031861174
+447031861534
+447031865718
+447031877392
+447031877975
+447031880502
+447031885537
+447031890014
+447031891762
+447031894541
+447031898197
+447031903871
+447031906765
+447031908701
+447031909751
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+447031913322
+447031915331
+447031918554
+447031918592
+447031918698
+447031918840
+447031920863
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+447031940670
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+447031964131
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+447031993967
+447031996818
+447032334576
+447035900183
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+447035900914
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+447035927916
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+447035939320
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+447035944729
+447035944779
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+447035960942
+447035965038
+447035966176
+447035966188
+447035966289
+447035966480
+447035968588
+447035969249
+447035969496
+447035969754
+447035969801
+447035969823
+447035972572
+447035973164
+447035973821
+447035977317
+447035978042
+447035978343
+447035978550
+447035983963
+447035988651
+447035988847
+447035989086
+447035992118
+447035996148
+447035997215
+447035997533
+447035998886
+447035999080
+447040110515
+447041743214
+447045702581
+447045704323
+447045704570
+447045705126
+447045705374
+447045706975
+447045707234
+447045707660
+447045708253
+447045709129
+447045709292
+447045710531
+447045710917
+447045711325
+447045712243
+447045712434
+447045712662
+447045712816
+447045712993
+447045713815
+447045714219
+447045719541
+447045720546
+447045721125
+447045721617
+447045722125
+447045724094
+447045725176
+447045727388
+447045729804
+447045733035
+447045733518
+447045736862
+447045742669
+447045743467
+447045747569
+447045748609
+447045754338
+447045759317
+447045767521
+447045768060
+447045770961
+447045776356
+447045780693
+447045782120
+447045783777
+447045785147
+447045785239
+447045790181
+447045791709
+447045795051
+447045798638
+447045799030
+447053491702
+447053492393
+447075158182
+447092849621
+447092861761
+447092864823
+447092980578
+447092981646
+447092981769
+447092982175
I do not know if anyone has bumped into this number or person :+44 7404 015703
Bradley Giuseppe of Bridgepoint Capital Investment company, Address : United Kingdom，London， 52 King Edwards Road Enfield EN3 7DB. Contacted us through exporthub website. Wants to import products from our company. Exchanged details and with no time was shown ready transfer copies then in the middle trying to get straight with specifics of what he really wants got emails saying payment made through Metro Bank has been stopped and must contact an officer to pay around ₤5900 to make the payment go through. At that moment the whole office figured could be a scam yet pissed at the amount of efforts put into the deal. After refusing to pay, tolerated to see how far this can really go if real or not and then the issue switched to sign a contract and pay $2300 notarization fee for the contract to an account in our country which I explained on a phone call with him that we never pay for something we are not buying, you want your payment to go through send the fee to us and we can make it on your behalf and issue solved. He yells that’s my responsibility if not paying he will find another factory then cut off and that was it. How funny it seemed too good to be true and still not sure if this really was a scam or not. Now got non stop scammers emailing us e.g fariasluiz94@yahoo.com (Joy Aldo)
pauleric567@gmail.com (Hannet Jacoby)
customsdutyoffice@gmail.com (Bernard Raoul)
Please beware guys out there, when people are struggling with the pandemic situation they still do whatever it takes to rob you.
Am confused about these number +447935209014
I really dont trust this number
+447587890462,could it be a scammer.
Thank you very much
+44 7588 041187 how about this one?
44 752 064 7169 claims to be a UK attorney named Barry Smith that handles probate and wants to help me with an account that I have apparently inherited from a relative I never knew. Not sure yet if its a scam but I am very close to finding out.
Hi hi, I’ve been having an August chat with this number. Please check for me. +447445021614
+44 70 8027 5025 Is this a scam?
44 752 064 7169 I was sent the same scam about a wealthy relative in the UK and waiting to hear back
Another one:
====
Dear [YOUR-NAME],
(It’s very urgent, please transfer this email to your CEO. If this email affects you, we are very sorry, please ignore this email. Thanks)
We are a Network Service Company which is the domain name registration center in China.
We received an application from Hua Ke Ltd on March 1, 2021. They want to register ” [YOUR-NAME] ” as their Internet Keyword and ” [YOUR-NAME] .cn “、” [YOUR-NAME] .com.cn ” 、” [YOUR-NAME] .net.cn “、” [YOUR-NAME] .org.cn ” domain names, they are in China domain names. But after checking it, we find ” [YOUR-NAME] ” conflicts with your company. In order to deal with this matter better, so we send you email and confirm whether this company is your distributor or business partner in China or not?
Best Regards
*******************************************
Mike Zhang | Service Manager
China Name Registry (Head Office)
No. 300, Xuanhua Road, Changning District, Shanghai200050, China
Tel: +86-2161918696 | Fax: +86-2161918697 | Mob: +86-1582177 1823
Web: www(dot)chinanameregistry(dot)com
*************************************************
+44 1954 320073
+44-1954-320070
it related to immigrate to uk company and they liars and wat to steal my visa number
A scammer posting as “john danilla” johndanilla7464@gmail.com from IP 197.211.58.24 wrote:
====
I am williams james from UK( northern ireland), i want to share a
testimony on how a powerful spell caster cured my HIV disease, i was
diagnosed of this disease, in the year 2009, last week i saw a testimony on
Dr. on how he cured an HIV patient, so i contacted him through phone
call and he asked me to email him, which idid, so he told me that all my
problems is over and then he decided to do an healing spell spell for me so
after he finished it, he told me to wait for just 24 hours and then i
should go for a test, so i really did as he had said, so my greatest
surprised when i went to the hospital to go for an HIV test, the Medical
doctor diagnosed that, i am now HIV negetative at first i was amazed and
now i have come to realise that this spell caster Dr. Akioya is a very
powerful one and a real spell caster. So viewers of this should please join
me in my celebration for i am the happiest man on earth today and if you
want to contact him, you can do this via his email
(drakioya17spellhome@gmail.com) or call him +2348105257464
A scammer posting as contactoffice896@gmail.com from IP 41.79.219.65 in Benin wrote:
+33644698567
Email : associationsauvonsvictimes@gmail.com / cellule-antifraude@null.net <= SCAM
====
INFOS URGENT AUX VICTIMES D’ARNAQUES SUR INTERNET
Pour tout vos différentes problèmes d’escroquerie dont vous aviez été victime sur internet contacter l’office Interpol pour un remboursement du double au triple sur leur site web : https://signaloipcs.wordpress.com
+447……. this phone number has been claiming to offer reliafe fund for covid 19 in kenya through assistance of fedela goverment but they are thugs….
.. after making a call they take a 100 bob kenya shillings
+44 7770 397582
I really don’t trust this number,I have him my Instagram account and Bank account number, apparently he will trade for me from my Instagram account till now he is quiet and he deleted my Instagram account too
Please help
+44 7707 415672 can anyone please check this number
+44 7840 155248 is this a scam team i want to verify because i have spent some money with this ao please help me
+44 7459 207089 I s this from a scammer? Kindly help, claims that the person is from UK and wanted to marry an Indian based bride.
+44 7404 412182[7/25, 8:43 PM] Abroad Rosalie Amili: These are the items which I have posted my darling golden chain, golden wristwatches,Apple iPhone, iPad, golden bracelet, diamond rings and rose flowers perfumes,and with a brown envelope inside the parcel okay my dear
[7/25, 8:43 PM] Abroad Rosalie Amili: Darling please take note there is money inside the parcel for you which contains two hundred and fifty thousand pounds for you
Is the number+447743133705 from a scammer too,he claims to have sent items that need clearance of$150 at the airport in Kenya
Can someone check this numbers;+44 7440 027961 & +44 7418 602130, are they scammers?
+44 7418 322403 how bout this is this scammer?
+44 7520 622244 do you know this number