Online fraud threat soars, with scant police response

Fraud, which mostly takes place online, has become the most commonly-experienced crime in England and Wales, and is growing rapidly – yet only one in 150 police officers focus on economic crime.

By Esther Martin

These were findings of the National Audit Office in a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General released on 30 June. Though data tracking the growth of online fraud is patchy, known ‘card not present’ cases – where stolen card details are used to make fraudulent transactions – has escalated 103% in the past five years, to 1.4 million incidents in 2016. A brighter flip side is that some ‘traditional’ crimes like vehicle offences and house burglary have sharply declined in recent years.