Cybercrime gang members jailed in Zambia

Lengthy jail terms have been handed to 22 Chinese citizens – and a Cameroonian national – for cyber-related crimes in Zambia. They were tried in the Lusaka Magistrate’s Court. Some of the gang members, including its mastermind Li Xianlin received up to 11 years in prison. BBC News reports that they were also fined between $1 500 and $3 000. Victims as far afield as Singapore, Peru and the UAE fell prey to their online scams, say Zambian authorities. After a trial lasting several weeks, the perpetrators pleaded guilty on three charges – computer-related misrepresentation, identity-related crimes, and illegally operating a network or service. The 22 people jailed on Friday were among a bigger group of 77 suspects arrested in April, in connection with what authorities called a ‘sophisticated internet fraud syndicate’. The swoop on a Chinese-run company in the capital, Lusaka, followed an alarming rise in Internet fraud cases in the country, targeting people in countries around the world.

Numerous Zambian nationals were also arrested after allegedly being recruited to be call-centre agents in the fraudulent activities, including internet fraud and online scams. The Zambian nationals were charged in April and released on bail so they could help the authorities with their investigations. BBC News notes that the authorities said the Zambians involved had been tasked ‘with engaging in deceptive conversations with unsuspecting mobile users across various platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, chatrooms and others, using scripted dialogues’. Among equipment seized were devices allowing callers to disguise their location and thousands of Sim cards.

Jenn Buta’s son Jordan killed himself in 2022 after being targeted by scammers who lured him into sending them explicit images of himself, and then tried to blackmail him. They pretended to be a pretty girl his age and flirted with him, sending sexual pictures to coax him into sharing explicit photos of himself. They then blackmailed him for hundreds of pounds to stop them sharing the pictures online to his friends. Jordan sent as much money as he could and warned the sextortionists he would kill himself if they spread the images. ‘There's actually a script online,’ Jenn told BBC News, from her home in Michigan, ‘And they're doing it quick, because then they can move on to the next person, because it's about volume.’ Samuel Ogoshi (22) and his brother, Samson (20) were arrested in Lagos and extradited to the US. It is feared that sextortion is under-reported due to its sensitive nature. But US crime figures show cases more than doubled last year, rising to 26 700, with at least 27 youth having killed themselves in the past two years. Researchers and law enforcement agencies point to West Africa, and particularly Nigeria, as a hotspot for where attackers are based.