The next time you see that image of a hooded, slightly evil-looking man hunched over a laptop, pause and consider that the world of scams has moved on.

It is no longer you against another individual with ill-intent, it is you against an entire eco-system of like-minded people, many of whom see it as their nine-to-five job.

The modern industry behind scams and fraud has tentacles all over the world. Different regions of our planet have developed their own specialisms.

I should know, I’ve spent most of my career working undercover as an investigative journalist to expose the latest scams and present the BBC’s Scam Interceptors series.

Here’s what I’ve learned about two of the biggest trends: the Indian scam call centres that ring millions of British households every year – and the West African entrepreneurs entrapping Britons with romance scams. Plus, I’ll give you the tools to fight back.

India – the silicon valley of swindles

India is estimated by the FBI to be the source of 85 per cent of the world’s fraudulent phone calls.

In the 1990s, big Western businesses (including Lloyds TSB, British Airways, National Rail and Tesco) moved their call centres to India.

Indian entrepreneurs saw the chance to set up shop, even giving their employees lessons in British celebrity gossip, making them watch episodes of The Bill and training them in English football’s vagaries to give them the edge in dealing with British customers with maximum familiarity.

By the late 2000s and into the 2010s, it was becoming clear that the Western public didn’t like this arrangement and businesses that had provided thousands of jobs in India pulled out.

This created an opportunity for criminals to step in. When the legitimate businesses began to leave, a huge amount of data on Western customers was left behind, in an era when we didn’t have serious regulation about how our data should be stored.

On top of that, a good number of the many thousands of Indian call centre staff found themselves without jobs. 

Plus, the idea had been created in the minds of the Western consumer that a call coming from South Asia related to customer support from a major company might well be legitimate. And so the Indian scam call centre was born.

Today’s scam callers in India are often employees of public-facing corporations with listed directors, some with hundreds of workers, human resources departments and payrolls. 

They use robocalls to phone hundreds of thousands of potential victims with a threatening message, such as: ‘Suspicious transactions on your debit card. Press “1” to speak to security department.’

This generic type of message can be heard as soon as the call is answered. If even 1 per cent of the 100,000 calls made in a day are put through, that’s still 1,000 potential victims on the phone with scammers.

They simply sit and wait for fresh ‘hot leads’ (sales talk for an interested customer, in this case a worried potential victim) and start taking details from those who have pressed 1, before passing them on to a more experienced ‘closer’ to finalise the scam and take payment. 

Every call is classified. Customer shouting down the line, telling you they know it’s a scam and never to call again? Classified as a DNC, or Do Not Call, their number removed from your data set.

Customer busy but possibly believing what you’re saying? CB, or Call Back. Customer hook, line and sinker and sent over to a closer? SM, or Sale Made.

Were this entire business to end tomorrow, it seems likely there could be a noticeable knock-on effect on the country’s GDP.

Let’s see what happens if you receive one of these calls and don’t hang up. The scammer will use their scripted argument to convince you to send money that day, by bank transfer, to another UK bank account, for example by telling you your own account has been compromised and you must move savings to a ‘safe account’.

The money arrives in the account specified by the scammer, which will be controlled by a ‘mule’, essentially a co-operating person taking a cut of the income in return for the use of their account, usually 1 to 5 per cent.

The mule transfers the victim’s money to another mule account, who takes their share. This second mule sends the money to a third account with another UK bank. 

Finally, the third mule sends the money to a bank in Latvia. That mule sends it to Thailand. The Thai mule finally sends it to an account in India, and it makes its way to the scammers.

The victim has lost a potentially life-changing amount but to the police in the UK, realistically, not enough to be worth the trouble of even opening an investigation.

And even if the police did – where would they begin?

The paper trail of banks, following the money between multiple different UK institutions before leaving the country?

This would involve co-operation with international law enforcement agencies, so it’s a huge undertaking. As far as I’m aware, there has only been one case in recent years where UK law enforcement collaborated with Indian colleagues to shut down scam call centres.

Phone scam telltale signs to watch out for: You are contacted out of the blue. Pressure and the impression of urgency. You’re asked to do something unusual (withdrawing large amounts of money as cash). You’re told not to speak to family members or the authorities. Requests for excessive personal information.

West Africa's fraud schools 

In Ghana, there are scam schools, known as ‘HK’, short for Hustle Kingdom.

They are controlled by senior scammers, who pass on their skills to a younger generation.

You have to pay to attend, and once the students ‘graduate’, they are drawn into the employment of a larger scam syndicate, which pools money and provides employee benefits like accommodation and food.

The work of the West African scammer is also broadly accepted by many in their communities.

There are plenty of Ghanaians and Nigerians for whom taking money from a European by deception is not a morally questionable act but an honourable one atoning for the ills of the past, even a civic duty to help the less fortunate.

The most common are romance scams. These can (mostly) be played out via text. While English language proficiency in Nigeria and Ghana is good, the caller’s accent could be a giveaway if they are posing as a woman from Canada or a man from the UK.

A romance scam network in Ghana (where they are known as Sakawa Boys, or ‘Putting Inside’ Boys in English, translated from the Hausa language spoken in part of Ghana) or Nigeria (where the groups are known as Yahoo Boys, due to their use of Yahoo.com email addresses) recruits young, frustrated men, mostly from poorer, rural communities.

Starters set up a social media profile and begin talking to people on singles groups on social media sites, dating platforms and forums.

They seem like a great catch; inevitably, they use profiles of good-looking people of all ages and give their fake selves fascinating and usually dangerous jobs. 

These almost always involve spending periods where it is difficult to communicate by conventional methods – the perfect cover to explain why they can’t talk on the phone or videocall.

Romance scam telltale signs: They will often begin with what’s known as ‘love-bombing’, essentially showering you with contact and compliments.

They then begin ‘seeding’ – laying the groundwork in the early part of a relationship for the money requests that follow.

‘Call backs’ will usually follow – with money requests that seem reasonable as they are related to seeded subject matter. 

For example, should they have a dangerous underwater welding job on oil rigs, when they suffer an injury at work and can’t pay their medical bill, it won’t seem entirely unusual that they ask for your assistance in helping with the money.

• How To Beat Scammers by Nick Stapleton is published tomorrow, by Michael O’Mara Books, priced £14.99.