Daily Yomiuri Online carries news of a group of telephone scammers in Tokyo brought to book who were using Voice over IP telephony services as part of their operation.

I want to point out here that, like most other comminication technologies, VoIP can be used by criminals. That doesn’t make VoIP a ‘criminals tool’ or any such thing but those who break the law are often liable to utilise legitimate tools for nefarious purposes.

While the article doesn’t actually detail what the nature of the scam was, it is noted that the scammers were using VoIP to ‘conceal’ their true location. They used a VoIP service through NTT docomo’s network which allowed them to place calls remotely as if they were originating from Tokyo’s ’03′ area code.

Ultimately, the scammers were not very sophisticated and were traced through NTT docomo. It does however bring to attention the fact that more advanced scammers could operate from outside the country in which the scam is being perpetrated and there ought to be future work on the best methods for securing VoIP networks against this sort of criminal activity.