How smishing scammers fund their lavish lifestyles

“They don’t keep money, they spend it here and now.”

Det Ch Insp Paul Curtis shows us around an evidence room full of designer shoes and bags. Thousands of items are neatly stacked in plastic containers on wooden shelves.

Items there have been seized by financial scammers, some of whom send fraudulent messages to victims known as smishing.

“They like to live a lavish lifestyle,” says Curtis. “We have between 8,500 and 10,000 pieces of evidence in this one room,” he says, “the result of house searches and raids” carried out by officers.

The smell of fresh leather goods permeates the air. Brightly colored Gucci stilettos attract attention from a distance; is a treasure trove of high-end kit worth tens of thousands of pounds.

These purchases are indicative of how much money they make from the crimes they commit and what they spend it on.

The term “smishing” is a portmanteau of the words “SMS” or “short message service” (the technology behind text messages) and “phishing.”

Scammers are sending fake text messages – ostensibly from a bank or other trusted company – to trick people into revealing personal information such as passwords and Pin numbers. The aim is to defraud them of their money.

Curtis is part of the Special Card and Payment Crime Unit, a team made up of officers from the City of London Police and the Metropolitan Police.

Although they are a London police force, the unit has a national mandate and is sponsored by the banking industry. It focuses on combating financial fraud.

“In a recent criminal case, the defendant was fined for sending 15,000 messages in five days. This was equivalent to earning one hundred thousand liras a month,” he says.

The senior officer was referring to Chinese student Ruichen Xiong, who was convicted of the crime in March this year after wandering around London sending messages to tens of thousands of potential victims.

Xiong was sentenced to 58 weeks in prison at Inner London Crown Court in June after pleading guilty to fraud by representation.

Half of UK mobile users said they received a suspicious message via text or iMessage between November 2024 and February 2025, according to Ofcom.

Gideon Rabinowitz, 64, lives in Newbury, Berkshire, and was a recent victim of smishing.

Just two months ago the former IT manager said he was scammed out of more than a thousand pounds after receiving a fake text message.

“I felt like a huge idiot, like I’d been raped,” she says.

“This really shook me up. It shook me up quite a bit for a few days. I felt very vulnerable and now I don’t know who to trust.”

Mr. Rabinowitz was led to believe that he had been contacted by his bank reporting a suspicious charge to his account.

In reality, he was receiving messages from a scammer.

“It all started with a text message out of the blue asking if I recognized a transaction – yes or no. Two and a half hours later I was out of pocket with £1,400.”

He adds: “Partly it was about the money, and there was also a feeling of being ripped off, of being looked over, because these people knew who I was. They knew where I lived.”

Scam text messages often appear to come from large companies such as utilities, banks or supermarkets. They usually contain a link. When a person clicks on this site, he or she may be sent to a fake website and asked for personal and financial information. The information can then be used to persuade them to transfer money from their account.

Smishing is done primarily through two devices; A Sim farm that houses multiple Sim cards and allows criminals to bombard people with thousands of scam messages.

The second is what is called SMS Blaster. It tricks nearby mobile phones into connecting to it and sends multiple fake messages within seconds.

The government says “smiling scams have a devastating impact on their victims”.

“Our Telecoms Charter sets out clear actions to secure SMS and reduce fraud in the telecoms sector.”

“We are also banning Sim farms. Banning these devices, which are used to send thousands of fraudulent messages, will shut down an important tool for criminals and protect consumers,” he says.

The ban is expected to come into force late next year. It will become illegal to possess or supply Sim farms without a specific reason.

Smishing is a difficult crime to solve and more education needs to be provided on fake text messages, a cyber expert has said.

“Smiling is very difficult to police because a lot of it comes from abroad and even if it is done in the UK it is very easy to do and difficult to trace,” says Ciaran Martin, former Chief Executive of the National Cyber ​​Security Centre.

“So while the police can sometimes defeat major operations, we shouldn’t look to the police as the strategic response to this.

“The strategic response is for people to understand that serious businesses don’t ask you for money via text, and for businesses to find better ways to engage with customers and verify that interaction.”

The police’s advice is simple: Don’t click on links in unsolicited messages you receive.

If you think you have been a victim of fraud, report it to Action Fraud and your bank and forward the message to 7726 so mobile networks can investigate further.

For more information go to: bbc.co.uk/scamsafe Where to find various resources

If you have been scammed or scammed, you can find details of help and support at: bbc.co.uk/actionline