The man responsible for running a multimillion-pound fraud website, used by scammers to trick people into handing over their bank details, has been jailed.
Tejay Fletcher, 35, pleaded guilty to running iSpoof, a website that allowed criminals and fraudsters to appear as if they were calling from banks, tax offices and other official bodies in an attempt to defraud victims.
They posed as representatives from banks including Barclays, Santander, HSBC, Lloyds, Halifax, First Direct, NatWest, Nationwide and TSB.
The total losses of frauds enabled by iSpoof in the UK alone exceeded £43m, with total global losses estimated to be at least £100m.
Judge Sally Cahill KC jailed Fletcher for 13 years and four months on Friday.
She told him: “For all the victims it was a harrowing experience,” but added that he “didn’t care” about them at the time.
“The late expression of remorse is regret for being caught rather than empathy for your victims,” she said.
At one point as many as 20 people every minute were being targeted by criminals calling from masked phone numbers using technology bought from iSpoof.
One victim lost £3m. The average lost among the 4,785 people who reported being targeted to Action Fraud was £10,000.
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Image: Tejay Fletcher, 35, founded the iSpoof website
But the total number of victims is thought to have been around 200,000 globally. Of 10 million fraudulent calls made, 40% were in the US, 35% were in the UK and the rest were spread across other countries.
Fletcher, who has 18 previous convictions for 36 offences, founded the site in December 2020 and was also its lead administrator, earning him around £2m in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
The Met said at its peak the website had 59,000 users. It also offered tools to obtain passwords and PINs, as well as the scam calls technology.
Scammers paid hundreds or thousands of pounds a month for its features, which were marketed on a channel on the encrypted messaging app Telegram.
Image: A Lamborghini Urus worth £230,000, owned by Tejay Fletcher
The court heard Fletcher seemingly used the proceeds to buy a £230,000 Lamborghini and also spent a total of £120,000 on two Range Rovers for him and his girlfriend.
Police also found a money counter, jewellery and an £11,000 Rolex in his home.
Simon Baker KC, defending, said Fletcher had no idea when he set up the website that it would be used for such large-scale fraud.
Image: Fletcher’s Range Rover worth £60,000
But the judge told Fletcher: “As is the case with any successful business you probably didn’t realise how successful and profitable your enterprise would be.”
‘A complex and challenging case’
He pleaded guilty to making or supplying articles for use in fraud, encouraging or assisting the commission of an offence, possessing criminal property and transferring criminal property, during a previous appearance at Southwark Crown Court in April.
Detective Superintendent Helen Rance, of the Met Police’s Cyber Crime Unit, said 169 people had been arrested in connection with the website, and investigations into who used its technology to carry out fraud continued.
Image: Some of the online services offered by iSpoof
Kate Anderson, deputy chief crown prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “The cost to the many victims in this case has not just been financial, it has also had a huge emotional impact, causing extreme distress and devastation to those affected – many of whom had their life savings stolen from them.
“This was a complex and challenging case, and I would like to thank the Metropolitan Police and the many national and international law enforcement partners who worked with the CPS to secure the evidence for us to present.”
Image: Kate Anderson, deputy chief crown prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), speaking outside court
She added: “We will continue to work with investigators to prosecute the fraudsters who used the website and we will be pursuing confiscation proceedings against Fletcher to recover the money he made from his criminality.
“We hope this case will encourage all those who think they’ve been a victim of fraud to come forward and report it to the police.”
The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was stabbed in the back and the arm after going to the class with her younger sister.
She is now campaigning for children to have mandatory first aid training at school in response to the growth of knife crime.
She said she clearly remembers what happened that day.
Image: Flowers and tributes near the scene of the attack a year ago. Pic: PA
“Some of the girls were sat down in a circle making bracelets with the teachers, and a couple of them were getting up to get beads. I was standing between two tables and he came through the doors.
“He stabbed a little girl in front of me and then came for me and stabbed my arm. I turned and then he stabbed my back, even though I didn’t feel it at the time.
“There was a bunch of girls huddled around so I just started pushing them down the stairs, telling them to get out and run.
“I was thinking ‘Where’s my sister?’ and ‘We need to get out’.”
She and many of the other victims ran to the house of a neighbour for shelter. “I just thought that I was going to die,” she said.
Killer ‘looked possessed’
The girl said she can clearly picture Rudakubana that day.
“What I remember most about him is his eyes. They just didn’t look human, they looked possessed. It was kind of like a dream and you’re on a movie set and watching yourself go through it and make these decisions.
“It’s just kind of like adrenaline. People like to think they know what they’d do in that situation but, in reality, you don’t until you’re in it.”
Image: Alice da Silva Aguiar, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Bebe King were murdered in the attack
Six-year-old Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe, who was seven, and nine-year-old Alice da Silva Aguiar died in the attack. It is something she finds difficult to talk about.
“I don’t think I can express how I feel about it,” the girl said. “A lot of anger and sadness.”
In January, Rudakubana was jailed for life and must serve a minimum of 52 years before he can be considered for release.
The chairman of the public inquiry into the atrocity called the attack “one of the most egregious crimes in our country’s history”.
Carrying knives ‘disgusting’
The girl who survived has now launched a campaign, supported by a clothing range called “Go Anywhere, Be Anything” to raise funds, to improve the ability of schoolchildren to help in the event of knife attacks.
“Everyone that’s going out and carrying knives is getting younger and younger,” she said. “And to think that it’s people my age is like disgusting.
“I just want to try and do the best I can to let people know that it’s not okay to do that and that they need to think about what they’re doing and the risks and how they’re harming themselves and other people.”
Her sister, who was also there that day, helped design “Go Anywhere, Be Anything”.
A three-minute silence will be held in Southport at 3pm to mark one year on from the attack. In an open letter to the community, Sefton Council wrote: “This period is incredibly hard for the families of Alice, Bebe and Elsie and all of those children and adults injured or who suffered lifelong psychological impact of witnessing the attack, and we acknowledge the huge impact on their lives, too.
“We must not forget the local people who rushed to support and to our emergency responders. They all remain always in our thoughts.”
It is a sentiment shared by the survivor.
“You live in fear every day that it could happen again,” she said.
“Physically I’m getting better every day and healing. Obviously, my scars stay as a reminder but everyone from that day is going to have mental scars forever.”
The scale of cheap Chinese e-commerce imports flown into Britain without paying any tariffs has become clearer following a Sky News investigation into this new multi-billion pound phenomenon.
We have uncovered the first official estimate of the value of so-called “de minimis” imports into Britain, ahead of an official inquiry into whether this legal clause – which excludes packages worth less than £135 from paying customs duties – should be allowed to continue.
Companies like Shein and Temu have become big players in British retail, not to mention elsewhere around the world, by manufacturing cheap products in China and then posting them directly to consumers, benefiting from the de minimis rules.
Clothing manufacturers in the UK claim that de minimis makes it nearly impossible to compete with these Chinese competitors, raising questions about the viability of domestic textile and apparel production.
However, economists argue that the main beneficiaries of the policy to exclude cheap imports from customs are lower-income households, since it allows them to spend less on their shopping. Removing it, they say, would disproportionately affect poorer families.
The government has committed to an inquiry into the rules, which are also being changed in the EU and the US, but up until now there has been no official estimate of its scale.
According to HM Revenue and Customs data released to Sky News following a Freedom of Information request, the total declared trade value of de minimis imports into the UK in the last fiscal year (2024-25) was £5.9bn.
That was a 53% increase on the previous year (£3.9bn), underlining the scale of growth of e-commerce imports into the UK.
While it is hard to gauge how much revenue this means the Treasury has forgone, an illustrative 20% tariff on flows of that order could raise more than £1bn.
While that sum alone would not fill the fiscal black hole faced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves in the coming budget, it would nonetheless be nearly enough to pay for the government’s recent U-turn on winter fuel allowances.
Sky has also obtained the first television access deep into the supply chain, helping bring those goods into the UK, as it boarded a flight that had just travelled from Chongqing to Bournemouth Airport.
We filmed inside the belly of a plane belonging to European Cargo, one of a number of air cargo firms booming as a result of these trade flows.
The untold story about de minimis is that it hasn’t just had an impact on shopping habits in the UK, or for that matter, the textiles manufacturing sector – it has also changed patterns of distribution.
Struggling regional airports that never saw their passenger numbers recover after the pandemic are now re-establishing themselves as hubs for cargo.
European Cargo is now the single biggest airline at Bournemouth Airport, despite not carrying a single passenger.
Other regional airports like East Midlands Airport and Prestwick in Scotland are seeing rapid growth in flows of trade.
All of which raises the stakes for the government’s inquiry into the de minimis system.
At present, there is no timeline for its decision, but removing the clause would have far-reaching effects across the economy.
The team’s open-top bus will travel along The Mall from 12.10pm.
It will end with a staged ceremony at the Queen Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace, which is expected to start at roughly 12.30pm and end at 1pm, the Football Association (FA) announced.
The Royal Marines Portsmouth band and the Central Band of the Royal Air Force will perform on the stage and highlights from the tournament will be shown on big screens.
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Liberal Democrats leader Ed Davey was one of those who asked the prime minister if it was “time for that bank holiday”.
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He was referring to comments made by Sir Keir in 2023. When, as leader of the opposition, he wrote on X that there “should be a celebratory bank holiday if the Lionesses bring it home”.
But with estimates suggesting an extra bank holiday would cost the economy £2.4bn, it’s understood such a move isn’t being planned by Downing Street.
‘There is no stopping them now’
The impact of the Lionesses second consecutive Euros title is already being felt across the UK.
At Bearsted Football Club in Maidstone, Kent, a mural of Alessia Russo, who levelled Sunday’s final with a goal in the 56th minute, has been unveiled.
Image: Alessia Russo scoring the levelling goal. Pic: Reuters
The club is where Russo first started playing, and chairman Jamie Houston told Sky News the Lionesses have helped transform the women’s game.
“Five years ago we never had a girl’s football team,” he told Sky correspondent Mollie Malone. “Now we have five separate teams for girls, and boys are accepting of more girls in the game.
“There is no stopping them now.”
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Lynda Hale, who played in the England squad in the first ever international women’s match against Scotland in 1972, reiterated that women’s football has changed drastically since she played.
“When I first started playing there was hardly anyone that would watch,” she told Sky News Breakfast.
“To put on the England shirt and think what we started has grown to this magnitude, and it is still going to grow, is absolutely fantastic. I think the sky’s the limit in women’s football.”
Asked what advice she would have for the current England squad after their win, Ms Hale said: “The girls need to make as many memories as they can and take everything in their stride.”