Met Admits Resource Problem At Cybercrime Unit

Stephenson’s comments came days after UK police arrested multiple suspects in connection with the Zeus Trojan that was used to steal bank account details, which led to the theft of more than £6 million over a few months. In the US 60 people were arrested, with the FBI revealing that the gang had stolen $70 million (£44 million) over there. Further arrests also took place in the Ukraine.

Yet the PceU has enjoyed some notable successes of late. In early August it arrested a criminal gang thought to be responsible for stealing millions of pounds from online bank accounts. This gang used large quantities of unsolicited spam emails to direct unsuspecting victims to spoof websites, purporting to be legitimate online banking sites. Once victims reached the site, they were lured into providing their banking passwords and other personal information.

Ongoing Threat

And the threat is very much still ongoing, according to Commissioner Stephenson, after he gave further examples of recent cybercrimes in his article.

He cited four criminals who obtained the personal financial details of hundreds of people, allowing them to identify up to £8 million they could steal. They siphoned off £750,000 from 64 victims before police arrested them. In another operation, detectives working with the financial sector found a network of 600 criminally-controlled bank accounts waiting to be used to ‘cash out’ the proceeds of cyber theft.

“I know of a distressed chief executive who came to police saying he feared having to lay off more than 8,000 workers because his £100 million-a-year company was haemorrhaging money to websites selling counterfeit versions of his company’s fashion jewellery,” wrote the commissioner.

Stephenson said “cyber-extortionists” had threatened to rent or buy botnets to mount distributed denial of service attacks against websites that refused to pay.

“My investigators tell me the expertise available to them is thin compared to the skills at the disposal of cyber criminals,” Stephenson said.

The resourcing difficulties come as the European Commission announced in April that it is assessing the feasibility of setting up a centralised cybercrime agency to tackle online fraud and child pornography.