iSpoof: Potential legal issues

News of the large scale operation involving the banking fraud related to iSpoof will inevitably involve a replay of many of the legal issues involved in the criminal prosecutions arising from the take down of EncroChat.

As with EncroChat, iSpoof's servers, based in the Netherlands rather than in France, were the target of the Dutch authorities as a part of a global law enforcement operation which reportedly also includes the British authorities. Dutch law enforcement tapped calls and it is already plain that this information has been shared with the British authorities resulting in over 100 arrests at the time of writing.

The way in which the British authorities interacted with their counterparts in the Netherlands and elsewhere will have important implications for the admissibility of evidence gathered abroad in this jurisdiction.

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal is still seized of a number of applications relating to the interception of communications from Encrochat. The similarities are already striking, but there are bound to be differences in the way this latest take down, apparently ultimately by the FBI, occurred not least through lessons that were learned in EncroChat.

This latest operation, and the continuing co-ordination between law enforcement across jurisdictions that has led to what will be another round of prosecutions with attendant legal arguments relating to the interception of communications abroad but with British involvement shows that EncroChat was not unique, but rather a taste of things to come.

Rupert Bowers KC was counsel for the first defendant in the first EncroChat case to come before the Court of Appeal.