Off the streets, criminals in Europe turn to online fraud

CYBERCRIMINALS ACROSS THE CONTINENT ARE EXPLOITING PEOPLE’S CONCERNS ABOUT COVID-19 BY SENDING OUT PHISHING EMAILS AND MESSAGES LACED WITH MALICIOUS CONTENT.

THEHAGUE: From trafficking dodgy surgical masks to peddling counterfeit medicines and running internet scams, criminals are finding ways to profit from the coronavirus crisis, European police warn.

With billions of people under lockdown in their homes and borders shut, police chiefs say criminals are finding it hard to make money out of “traditional” activities like burglary and drug smuggling.

Instead they are preying on people’s fears of the Covid-19 pandemic to sell them substandard protective goods or trick people out of their cash online, warned Europe’s police agency Europol.

“Criminals are just interested in one question: ‘how can I make more money?’,” Europol director Catherine De Bolle told AFP.

“This is why they are now abusing the pandemic to change their way of working.”

Police around the world seized 34,000 counterfeit surgical masks in one major operation targeting so-called “corona criminals” earlier this month, Europol said in a report Friday.

“Fraudsters have been very quick to adapt well-known fraud schemes to capitalise on the anxie t i e s and f e ars of vi c t i ms throughout the crisis,” the report added.

In many European countries, police have reported a dramatic drop in common criminal behaviour. Spanish police said there had been a roughly 50% drop in criminal offences compared to a year earlier since the country was put on a near total lockdown on March 14.

“There is no doubt that confinement makes crime more difficult,” said the deputy director of Spain’s Guardia Civil police force, Laurentino Cena.

Sales of street drugs have also dropped sharply in many countries since the outbreak as authorities shut borders and restrict the movement of people.

But the flip side of the coin is a rise in other forms of crime trying to profit on the back of the disease. Austria’s interior minister Karl Nehammer said that “we see a decrease in breaks-ins, burglaries, but at the same time cybercrime is on the rise”.

Online fraud was exploding across Europe, several agencies and police forces said.

The World Health Organization has warned of a sharp increase in email phishing and scams using its name to try to steal money and sensitive information.