I'm on the trail of a new generation of criminals.
They're fuelling a fraud epidemic.
I was starting to panic because obviously my account hit zero.
I just started crying.
Their targets are everywhere - big brands, the banks...
And they could be coming for you.
I feel like, how stupid was I to believe this?
They are openly using social media to run criminal networks.
You could potentially earn anywhere from £2000 to £4,000.
And promoting fraud as a lifestyle choice.
I'm a London scammer, I see it, I want it, I click it.
Nights in the Bando Pyrex whipping.
So he's saying, I'm making all this money and if you want to make this
money, here's how you do it.
My name is Kaf Okpattah and I'm investigating what happens
when fraud goes viral.
There is one crime that is the most commonly experienced of all.
Fraud.
It makes up 40% of all criminal activity in the UK.
During the pandemic it boomed, costing us all more
than £2 billion in a year.
For many the crime begins with a dodgy text.
I've found out where some of the messages
like these are coming from.
Earlier this year, Emmeline Hartley was fooled
by a text from fraudsters.
Well, there was a text, first of all, from the Royal Mail.
It said on the text delivery failed you need to pay £2.99
additional postage paid.
And I've paid that before.
And it kept directing me to the Royal Mail website.
And then I clicked back and scrolled around and then
I entered my details.
And then I got a phone call the next day,
which was on my birthday, from my bank.
In fact, it was the fraudsters.
Because they had used the information she had entered
to the fake Royal Mail website, she believed it was her bank.
They convinced her to transfer her money into a different
account to protect it.
Emmeline suddenly realised she had just paid over
£1000 to criminals - everything she had.
I just broke down on the phone.
He was still on the phone.
I just started crying and he's still trying to calm me down,
knowing full well at this point, there's nothing else he could get
out of me and eventually just gave up and hung up,
to which point I just, I wailed.
Emmeline shared her story online.
It went viral.
It led to messages of support, and she got her money
back from the bank.
But Emmeline also received disturbing messages.
I started to get other messages from people who were supposedly
within the scammers' network as well, which were a bit worrying.
So a few of them sent me screenshots of the scammers' bank account
with my money in it, in the exact transactions that I'd
sent, the exact figures.
So I knew, obviously, that it had come from them.
It's surprising how public and open it is.
Like it's almost as if it's not illegal.
The photo that showed Emmeline's money going into another bank
account was posted by someone calling themselves Uncle Vio.
I want to find out more about him and what he's up to.
It turns out this little green king has been marketing himself on social
media as a fraud consultant.
'With the economy in a rough spot, generating a legal source
of income has become tough.
But Uncle Vio is here to assist you.'
This promotional video was posted on Snapchat.
'You could potentially earn anywhere from £2000 to £4,000.'
Uncle Vio offers a way into fraud.
'So if you're interested, don't hesitate to message us today
'at Uncle Vio for more information.'
His marketing might be professional and modern -
but this is old fashioned crime.
As his victims know only too well.
Sending out fraudulent text messages like the one that tricked Emmeline
is known as spamming.
We wanted to find out how easy it would be to become
a spammer ourselves.
Uncle Vio was ready to help.
He's been advertising on Snapchat for people to work with him.
And he's easily reached through the messaging app Telegram.
He got back to us immediately.
It cost £100 in bitcoin to buy our way in.
He explained that he was offering a fake website
for spamming phone numbers - or leads.
For £15 more he said he would spam 4000 "leads" on our behalf.
I've never met Uncle Vio but thanks to a couple of apps
on my phone and £115, I could have tried to defraud
thousands of people.
Obviously I couldn't take part in the fraud,
so I didn't take him up on the offer.
Instead, I asked if we could supply some numbers.
Vio agreed to the deal.
But all of the phone numbers belonged to me.
Sure enough, I was targeted.
It was scammers pretending to offer me a phone contract.
You said you needed my bank details, is that right?
Yeah.
What details would you need?
So we will need like the sort code and the account number.
We'll also take the card number and the security code for taking
the first payment of £29.
I should probably let you know that I'm actually a BBC
reporter for Panorama.
It's pretty obvious that you're trying to scam me,
how can you do that?
It's only like to give you a contract.
It's clearly not though.
Any normal provider...
Go to hell with your CVV passcode.
HANGS UP.
Uncle Vio appears to be running a sort of criminal enterprise.
But we haven't been able to identify him.
After we wrote to Uncle Vio on social media, he phoned
us, using his alias.
He said he doesn't actually commit fraud himself but has
people working for him.
When asked about defrauding Emmeline he said, "That was one of my boys.
That wasn't even me."
After we wrote to Snapchat, Uncle Vio's account was closed
for violating community guidelines.
Criminals like Uncle Vio used to hide on the dark web,
but now they don't need to.
Social media can give them enough anonymity to escape investigation.
Anonymous accounts are leaving not just a small amount of breadcrumbs
to investigate them, there are no breadcrumbs,
there is no additional footprint left behind them,
so to investigate this is nearly impossible.
This anonymity has enabled some social media fraudsters to build
influential brands without the fear of being caught.
And there's one in particular that stands out.
Meet Tankz.
Listen - I'm a London Scammer, I see it, I want it I click it.
Nights in the bando pyrex whippin.
He keeps his true identity hidden while rapping and bragging
about fraud on social media.
This track has been played nearly 7 million times on Youtube.
From time to time he even posts a bit of life advice.
It doesn't matter if it's legal or illegal at the end of day
it's still a hustle.
He is probably, you know, one of the influencers out
there when it comes to this kind of stuff.
He wants to be the Kim Kardashian of fraud.
Tankz is on Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Tiktok.
He's built his reputation through a web of the biggest
social media platforms.
With a total of over 150,000 followers, Tankz is a social media
influencer who promotes crime.
Fraudsters on social media have brought this kind
of crime to a new audience.
I've gone back to my old school to meet some year 12s.
These students are not involved in fraud themselves but have agreed
to talk me through what school kids are finding on social media.
When did you start seeing fraud specific
posts on social media?
I'd say around year 10.
So that's like 15?
On social media.
Has this become like a thing for young people?
Yeah, definitely.
No one really brags about other crimes.
You don't really hear people say, oh yeah,
I robbed that house last night.
So that's why if it's on social media, it's everywhere,
you've seen the lifestyle, you've seen everything, then there's
no reason for you to think it's really bad.
I think it's very much glamorised all over social media
to have the rich lifestyle.
And so it doesn't really matter how you get there.
The fraudsters, they're thinking as it's not my pocket, I don't care.
But they don't actually sit there and think whose pocket
is it coming out of.
That person is losing out on their money.
They're not going to get that money back.
For the social media generation, there's a gateway to crime
that they hold in the palm of their hand every day.
Online fraud against UK retailers is on the rise.
On social media it's known as clicking.
Last year it's thought to have cost the UK economy over a quarter
of a billion pounds.
Tankz, the man in the mask, doesn't just rap about fraud.
He's been selling how-to guides about clicking.
They're known as methods.
He's promoting a lifestyle, which is what influencers do.
So he's saying, I'm making all this money and if you want to make this
money, here's how you do it.
You have to buy these methods off me.
We posed as someone interested in learning about fraud.
We asked Tankz for a guide via Instagram.
He offered us a set of how-to guides to choose from.
We chose what he called the expert guide.
It cost £100.
The files he sent contain multiple techniques to commit fraud.
We're not going to reveal his tricks, but I can
tell you these methods target major brands.
And there's even a way to con the taxpayer by defrauding
the Universal Credit system.
We showed the guide to fraud expert, Tim Ayling.
Based on what you've seen there, I'm guessing it poses a threat or...?
Oh yeah, for sure.
I mean what he's doing here is finding weaknesses
in systems of different companies and advertising that.
I mean the price, £100, he's got to be selling that a lot
for it to be worthwhile for him to do this so for sure,
there's going to be a lot of takers and that in itself is an issue.
Tankz is still selling these guides, he's still making money from them,
does that mean that retailers, banks, even the government,
haven't clocked onto his methods?
Certainly in the finance world and to an extent the retail world,
there is a lot of technology that they have in place to stop
as much as they can.
The reality is that it's very difficult to stop everything.
Tankz's Tiktok, Instagram and Snapchat accounts
were closed after we wrote to the social media companies.
Twitter said he was not in breach of their guidelines.
Youtube didn't close his account, but said they strictly prohibit
videos 'that promote violence or criminal activity'.
Many of the clicking methods being circulated by people
like Tankz rely on the fraudsters getting hold of stolen
personal information.
This information is known as "fullz".
We kind of use the term "fullz" now, Full Financial Profile essentially
is what that stands for and we know that criminal can get
these through the likes of phishing attacks.
So they might send you an email, get you to click a link,
fill out all your details.
And once they've captured that information, what
are they doing with it?
Essentially they will sell that.
Again, fraudsters are using social media for their marketing.
Sometimes, they even give away free samples of fullz.
Like on this account on Instagram.
My name is Kaf, I'm a reporter from the BBC.
Some of the phone numbers of the victims were listed
so I gave them a call.
I was just wondering if you were aware that your
details were online.
I don't want to scare you.
It's all sitting there on Instagram.
I'm sorry about this.
It's clear that the details are real.
I'll let you go right now so you can double check your account.
I felt as if I was the one violating their privacy.
No, no, that wasn't nice.
I know.
After making the calls, we reported this post to Instagram
using their reporting tool.
But they left it up there for a month.
I went to meet one of the people whose information had been posted.
I showed him what we'd found.
I can see basically all my details, I can see my full name,
I can see my fully address, my number of my phone,
the number of my card.
My account number, my sort code.
So basically I can see my whole life here.
What's going through your head having looked at that?
It's scary because you never realise how unprotected you are.
We've reported it to Instagram but they haven't taken it down.
If it's still there that means they, they don't,
they don't care about us.
Wilson had cancelled his card by the time the post went up.
But with the help of Instagram social media fraudsters now
have his personal information.
After we wrote to Instagram's PR team, the post was
finally taken down.
But they didn't explain why it stayed up for so long.
Facebook who own Instagram told us "fraudulent activity is banned"
and they take "strong action wherever possible to remove it".
They say they've launched a new reporting tool
within the facebook app.
So what is the government doing to tackle online fraud
and its promotion on social media?
Earlier in the year they unveiled plans to reduce illegal
and harmful digital content.
It's called the Online Safety Bill.
The world wide web was, of course, invented by a Brit,
and now the UK is setting a safety standard for the rest
of the world to follow.
The proposed laws were initially aimed at tackling things like online
hatred and abuse, not fraud.
But after pressure from consumer groups, the banks and the police,
the Government changed its mind.
The government announced that they did want posts
about fraud to be covered by the rules after all.
But I'm reading the draft of the new laws and I can't see any
mention of fraud anywhere.
Fraud experts say it is included in what the bill refers
to as illegal content but for some, that's not enough.
It shows that they had no thought prior to the bill
drafting to include fraud.
After a bit of campaigning they said, OK it should include
fraud, but it doesn't actually do very much to hold the companies that
are providing these online media platforms to account.
This bill is not fit for purpose for the war against fraud.
It's miles off.
The Government says:
Social Media Fraudsters have their eyes on our bank accounts.
So banks and businesses are fighting back.
They've brought in new systems to verify their customers'
transactions - including the one time passcode.
But criminals are finding more and more ways around it.
Now the one time passcode is essentially sent to your mobile
phone so that you can authorise a transaction, but what we know
is that criminals are often socially engineering the victim to get that
one time passcode, you know.
Carina Schneider knows how easy it is to be caught out.
It started with a call she thought was from her bank.
They call you.
They call you telling you your account
has been compromised,
let's go through security, and they go through security,
they know your name, they know your address,
they know your date of birth.
She said I'm going to send you now
a one time passcode, and then you just read
the information to me please.
And that's what I did.
Carina had unwittingly given the criminals the one time passcode
which is used to authorise activity on an account.
They say that my current account was compromised.
They would cancel my card, open a new account and then my money
would be safe, but that was just the beginning of it,
because I had savings as well.
How much money ended up in this new account?
£7,192.
She was refunded by her bank but it looks like
the criminals got away with it.
I feel like how stupid was I to believe this,
and I do read a lot I see the news, and I didn't realise how damaging
was this one time passcode.
Stealing one time passcodes is a growing criminal trend.
I started investigating how one gang offered to help
fraudsters do it with a highly professional automated service.
OTP Agency marketed themselves through the Telegram app.
They used videos like this to advertise their services
while hiding who they were.
The group was even on the review site Trust Pilot.
It was a highly rated service.
So how did it work?
Imagine a criminal client of OTP Agency has got hold of your details.
They try to buy something - and when they do, your bank sends
you a one time passcode to check that it is you making the payment.
At this point, the criminal uses OTP Agency to trigger a robo-call
to you, posing as your bank.
I've obtained a demonstration of one of these calls
from inside OTP Agency.
It shows just how convincing they can be.
John Seymore, this is an automated call from Halifax bank.
They pretend to be calling to prevent fraud.
They say if you want to stop the transaction, you need to give
them your one time passcode.
An authorised payment of £85.23 was made using your debit
card ending in 1312.
In order to cancel this transaction, please enter the code that
you received by text message followed by the hash
key after the beep.
If you follow these instructions, the criminals will have everything
they need to take your money.
I was not the only one investigating them.
I discovered an American cyber intelligence firm,
Scylla Intel was also on the case.
My professional focus is disrupting financially motivated cybercrime.
We're not revealing his identity for security reasons
We're not revealing his identity for security reasons.
Are services like OTP Agency, are they a one-off?
I would describe it as a growing market.
And whereas fraud is this nebulous term, what's developed now
are these services that makes cybercrime incredibly approachable.
Scylla was looking into a wider network of UK based cyber fraud
groups, including OTP agency.
But after information was shared with the police,
OTP Agency suddenly disappeared.
It doesn't seem to have deterred others from
offering a similar service.
This colourful cartoon looks like a gateway into serious crime
using one time passcodes.
Use our service to intercept your OTPs or telepins from your target.
iSpoof is here to help.
The cat and mouse game would always continue with criminals and police,
but it is just about the distance in between the cat and the mouse.
Can you say, who is winning in that cat and mouse game?
I would have to say right now, criminals are winning in the case
of fraud in the world of cybercrime.
In the world of cybercrime,
it's easy to stay anonymous and hidden.
But there's one social media fraudster who's not
as clever as he thinks he is.
Remember Tankz?
He's the guy who raps about fraud who sold me a fraud guide.
I think I've worked out where he is.
And I'm on the way there now.
Tankz' posts about life as a fraudster reveal
more than he intended.
Typing on youtube search bar in this video Tankz is heard
saying he's a uni student.
Do your parents know you click?
Yes, but because I'm at uni, it's made them kind
of more accepting of it.
In this clip, he suggests he lives in the Wembley area
of North West London.
I'm gonna go to Kings Cross, head back to Wembley from there.
But the most distinctive thing in his videos that
I've noticed is this...
The black and grey carpet.
I think I've matched it to a student accommodation block near here.
Another right and hopefully when we start going down we're
going to be on the road to Tankz's apartment.
Left up ahead, that's good.
Now we're in the right place, the question is how will I recognise
the anonymous London Scammer?
Again, Tankz has given too much away online.
Earlier in the year, he posted a video of a run-in with the police
in which he accidentally revealed his number plate.
When I searched official records, I could see
that it is a grey Vauxhall Corsa.
All I have to do is find the car.
That's it, that right there, that's Tankz' car.
That's his number plate, it's a grey Vauxhall.
All that's left now is to wait for Tankz.
So we did.
And when he turned up we were there.
The first confirmed pictures of Tankz.
They're so good, you can pretty much ID him from this.
So who is he?
An ebay account in the name of Tankz gives a clue -
an email address for a Luke Joseph.
We've been told there's someone with that name who lives
in the student accommodation where the Vauxhall was parked.
And then there's this - an Apple music page suggests
the writer of this Tankz song was Luke Joseph.
The clothes match - and so does the name.
It seems that Tankz, the London Scammer may be a London
student called Luke.
This is a talented individual who clearly is clever.
But using those skills for something that in my mind
is criminal and is wrong, if Tanks is prosecuted there
is a real risk he'll face prison.
We wrote to Luke Joseph and Tankz about our allegations.
There was no response.
All the social media companies who responded
to our questions say they have rules against fraudulent activity.
They all said they take enforcement action against violations,
work with law enforcement agencies, and are developing new
ways to combat fraud.
Only telegram did not respond to our request for a comment.
Social media has transformed how criminals work.
You can now appeal to hundreds, thousands, millions of people in one
go by a simple social media post.
It's helping to fuel an epidemic of crime.
It seems the Government and social media companies
are struggling to stop the spread.
Social media is now the area of expertise for criminals
because we are immersed in it, so they're immersed in it.
So, social media companies need to realise that they're
part of the problem.
The UK's number one crime is going viral.
Keep an eye out for the social media fraudsters - next time,
they could be coming for you.