Dozens of romance scammers arrested after specialist fraud squad investigation

Dozens of suspected scammers and romance fraudsters have been arrested after specialist financial investigators uncovered organised networks of criminals operating across the UK and Nigeria.

In just one of a series of raids this month, police detained a man suspected of selling personal banking information online and enabling fraud through money laundering. Two Rolex watches and £3,000 in cash were seized from his home, in the Midlands.

A total of 31 arrests have now taken place in Europe and Africa as part of Operation Seraphim.

BBC News has been given exclusive access to the City of London Police operation, which involves investigative work by financial crime unit the Cyber Defence Alliance (CDA), as well as co-ordination with the National Crime Agency and the Nigerian Police Force's cybercrime team.

Many of those arrested are suspected of romance fraud, where scammers often spend months nurturing a relationship with their targets before slowly encouraging them to hand over money.

Kirsty Guest, who was scammed out of £80,000, is just one of the hundreds of victims targeted by romance fraudsters over the last few years. After coming out of a difficult marriage, the florist from North Yorkshire met a man on a dating app, who called himself "Patrick". Over months they struck up a romantic relationship.

"He built a rapport with me. There was no rush," she says. "He explained about things in his childhood, we spoke about places where he'd lived, he spoke about where I'd lived. So, there was no real sense that this was going the wrong way for me, there were no red flags."

She says she was excited when she would get a message from him and when she was able to speak to him on the phone.

"It did make my day," she adds. Then, while he said he was on a business trip abroad, she had a worrying call.

"He said he'd been in an accident. I'm the kind of person that would help anyone. When he said that, I just wanted to help him. I wanted to make everything right."

"Patrick" gave her his bank details so she could help him with some financial transactions, and having a "nosey around" she could see he was wealthy.

But then he started asking for money to tide him over until he could recover from the accident.

Guest was sucked in, eventually transferring more than £80,000 of her own money to his account and those of his associates, almost certainly "money mules".

"These are not just gentlemen thieves, confidently swindling us of a few pennies here and there," says Craig Rice, who heads up the CDA. "They're ruining lives and creating misery."

Rice's team of experts - from intelligence services, law enforcement and finance - work with police to fight fraudsters who cost banks millions in repayments to customers who have been targeted.