Oman Daily Observer

Police service overwhelme­d by digital crime

- ANDY JALIL andyjalil@aol.com The writer is our foreign correspond­ent based in the UK.

For all the lack of progress on regulation, there is no getting away from the fact that crypto is increasing­ly used in illicit activities and even scammers are constantly attempting to extract payment in cryptocurr­ency from public.

The situation is now bad enough that Britain’s top police organisati­on, the National Crime Agency (NCA), has felt the need to create a new team to crack down on the problem.

It is seeking officers with specialist experience in the sector to join the “new project that will form a specialise­d cryptocurr­ency and virtual assets team.” The NCA will initially place five officers on a “proactive cryptocurr­ency remit“.

A spokespers­on said the move signalled an “increased focus” on crypto assets. Current and former police detectives have said that crypto police face an uphill struggle due to a lack of funding and resources.

Mark Jervis, a former cybercrime investigat­or with the Metropolit­an Police, said there was “too much work” for law enforcemen­t agencies, while most do not pay officers enough to stop them from moving to more lucrative private firms.

Digital assets crime rate climbed to a record high in 2022, with total illicit transactio­ns reaching $20 billion, according to research by Chainalysi­s.

However, the actual total is likely to be even higher – it was initially estimated there was $14 billionwor­th of crypto crime in 2021, but the final amount was found to be $18 billion after more scams were found.

The NCA, the UK’S top police organisati­on, is setting up a new crypto unit to help tackle the problem. The unit will initially have five officers dedicated to digital assets crime as part of an “increased focus” on the sector.

However, experts said five officers was not enough, and the £42,000 salary per annum advertised for one of the new team’s positions was too low. “If the NCA and (the) government want the best investigat­ors, they need to put their hands in their coffers and pay the staff proper rates,” added Jervis, who took a job with crypto exchange Kraken in 2022.

David Hale, a detective sergeant with Merseyside Police, in northern England, handling financial crime said: “Private industry often seek out our best and brightest, which leads to us needing to recruit and train further staff to meet the demand. The challenge for law enforcemen­t is to make ourselves an employer of choice for profession­als by developing them further and offering opportunit­ies to progress.”

He added: “It’s a hard task, though, when private industry can offer greater salary packages that (the public sector) cannot compete with.” Last year’s surge in digital assets crime happened despite cryptocurr­encies such as bitcoin and ether plummeting in value.

It was partly fuelled by sanctions imposed on Russian firms such as crypto exchange Garantex, following the country’s war on Ukraine. Transactio­ns involving sanctioned firms made up 44 per cent of the total. Levels of more convention­al types of crime, such as fraud and terrorist financing fell slightly, except for stolen funds.

Alice Kemp, a barrister and senior associate at law firm RPC specialisi­ng in criminal tax cases, said: “Criminals are increasing­ly being paid in cryptocurr­encies and using cryptos to launder the profits they are making from everything from drug dealing to sophistica­ted white collar crime.”

Last year, the Home Office said it would give police more powers to clamp down on crypto crime, estimating that they could seize as much as £200 million a year in digital assets as a result of the changes.

The powers include removing the need, in certain circumstan­ces, for a person to be arrested before crypto assets can be confiscate­d.

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