NCA-led crackdown removes 3.7m fraud accounts, 30 arrests

The National Crime Agency has hosted an international operation targeting fraud and scam networks operating from parts of Africa, working alongside 15 law enforcement agencies and 15 technology companies including Meta, Microsoft and Google. Almost 30 suspected scammers were arrested, mostly in Ghana and Nigeria, and 3.7 million fraudulent online profiles and accounts were removed.

The operation brought together more than 100 people from overseas agencies and tech firms in London, including representatives from the FBI, the Nigeria Police Force and Ghana's Cyber Security Authority. It was the fourth initiative of its kind and the first hosted by the NCA. The focus was on fraudsters based in West Africa who use social media profiles to run investment and impersonation scams against victims, including people in the UK.

Separate strikes tied to the operation led to 19 arrests and 303 devices seized in the Accra region of Ghana, with 117 people identified as trafficking victims awaiting return to Nigeria. Nine more arrests happened across Delta State in Nigeria. Ghanaian law enforcement had also led its own earlier strikes on suspected scam centres, seizing further phones and laptops. Across the operation, private sector partners identified $11 million in potentially freezable funds.

Meta said it removed more than 3.7 million accounts, Pages and Groups targeting people in the US, UK and elsewhere, and passed on leads about more than 30 suspected scam centres. Data shared through Report Fraud helped identify over 1,110 West African Facebook and Instagram accounts linked to fraud reports, alongside hundreds more accounts and scam domains found through other enforcement data.

What this actually means for you

This is not a story about your accounts being hacked. Nothing here suggests that UK consumers' personal data, passwords or bank details were taken as part of this operation. What it shows is that a specific, organised set of scam networks, mostly using social media to run investment and impersonation fraud, has had a chunk of its infrastructure removed and some of its people arrested.

That is a real disruption. It is not the end of the problem. New accounts, new adverts and new impersonation profiles can be created quickly, and this operation does not mean every West African scam centre has been closed down. The warning signs that led to this crackdown are still worth knowing, because the tactics will keep turning up elsewhere.

Warning signs to watch for

• Adverts promising guaranteed or unusually high returns on an investment
• Celebrity endorsements of an investment opportunity, especially ones you can't verify elsewhere
• Pressure to move the conversation to instant messaging quickly
• Invitations to join an "exclusive" investment group
• Requests to keep the opportunity secret from family, friends or a bank
• Any request for an upfront "tax", release or verification fee before you can access returns
• Repeated pressure to invest more, or urgency to act before an offer disappears

If you see several of these together, stop communicating. Genuine investment opportunities do not need secrecy or upfront fees to unlock your own money.

What to do

If you believe you've already been targeted by an investment, impersonation or romance-style scam, report it at reportfraud.police.uk. That reporting data is part of what helped identify accounts and suspects in this operation, so it has a genuine use beyond your own case.

If you're unsure whether a message, advert or investment pitch you've received is genuine, check it before you respond. Veystrix has a free scam checker at /tools/scam that reviews a suspicious message for the patterns described above, and a link checker at /tools/url if you want to check where a link actually goes before you click it.

What this does not fix

A VPN does not stop someone sending you a fraudulent message, and it will not identify a scam advert for you. It encrypts your connection and hides your IP address from networks you're using, which is useful for privacy, but it has no bearing on whether an investment offer is genuine or whether a social media account messaging you is real. The actual defence against this kind of fraud is recognising the warning signs above and checking before you act, not a piece of security software.