Police accused of turning a blind eye to online fraud
Police forces have come under fire for turning a blind eye to online fraud after figures emerged showing that fewer than one in 100 cybercrimes are being investigated, with the rest being ignored or going unreported.
A report in The Times suggests that authorities are so overstretched by the scale of the problem that they have resorted to software to whittle down cases to which scant resources can be applied with the greatest chance of a conviction.
Despite this less than 9,000 people were convicted of such crimes last year – from an estimated 3.2m cases of online fraud. Experts have warned that this oversight allows criminals to operate with near impunity online, fuelling an explosion of criminality in the digital sphere.
Stephen Greenhalgh, deputy mayor for policing and crime in London, said: “The impact for victims is often devastating, whether they are individuals or businesses. Fraud and cyber-enabled fraud [are] considerably under-reported and under-investigated. Too often the police response to fraud has been inadequate.”
Since 2013 victims of cyber crime have been routed through Action Fraud, a division of the Home Office set up exclusively to tackle the problem but of over 230,000 reports last year only a quarter were passed onto the police for follow up.
One road block facing authorities is the fact that a significant proportion of internet fraud is conducted overseas, beyond the jurisdiction of UK authorities.