Police ‘can’t deal’ with fraud, chiefs admit

Police authorities need technology firms to help to root out fraudsters if they are to turn the tide on scams, senior law enforcers have warned.

Recent industry figures have suggested 70pc of all scams start online and 85pc used the internet in some way to deceive victims out of cash.

While banks and businesses that had lost money to fraud had an incentive to tackle it, “the tech platforms do not have the same driver”, said James Thomson, chairman of the City of London Police Authority Board.

“The number of frauds that are adequately tackled is still a relatively low number, and that is because the volume is so great,” he said. “Policing simply cannot deal with the existing volume that is coming through today, let alone the likely growth if it’s not made tougher for the fraudsters.”

The City of London Police Authority Board oversees the work of the City of London Police, the home of Action Fraud, the fraud reporting service.

According to official crime figures in England and Wales, fraud accounts for just over a third of offences.

MPs, consumer groups including Which?, and industry bodies have called for fraud to be included in the

Government’s planned Online Safety Bill. This would force tech firms to swiftly remove scams or face huge fines.

So far, the Government has suggested it will demand social media firms clamp down on frauds posted on the likes of Facebook and Snapchat, including romance fraud. But investment frauds and other scams run by criminal gangs on an industrial scale will be ignored by the Bill. A report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services previously described law enforcement’s response to fraud as “disjoined and ineffective”.