Met Launches Major Offensive On Online Fraud

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) is carrying out a major operation today, focusing on tackling economic crime, with a strong emphasis on taking down online fraud crooks.

Operation Stimtone is the biggest ever attack on economic crime by the Met, as 900 officers will be working across London in over 300 separate operations.

The MPS is hoping to make arrests for a wide range of crimes, including those in which online businesses are the victims. So far 16 people have been arrested and £114,390 has been seized.

Retail intelligence

The police are working closely with the British Retail Consortium (BRC) on catching crooks who hijack online shopping accounts.

“Retailers need customers to have confidence online. Online crime and fraud undermines that and causes costs for retailers, so of course retailers are very well placed to help police fight this kind of crime,” a spokesperson for the BRC told TechWeekEurope.

“The kind of people who are involved in this kind of crime are involved in other kinds of crime as well… By using this kind of collaboration you are tackling crime more broadly.”

The BRC has been working closely with the Met Police over the past few months, talking about how it can share intelligence to catch criminals. Work started in March, when the retail body had lunch with Met commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe to highlight concerns including e-crime and fraud. They are now due to meet on a monthly basis.

“Retailers hold an incredible amount of intelligence on all types of retail crime,” a separate BRC spokesperson said. “What we are really keen to do is work with the police so they can make better use of that intelligence.

“Today’s operation is using some of that information and intelligence to better effect.

“One of the issues is that quite often, any kind of retail crime is grossly under-recorded by the police for a variety of reasons. So it doesn’t always show the true extent of the offence.”

The BRC has its eyes on the upcoming elections for police commissioners too, saying it wants to make it clear to them how serious fraud is for online businesses across the UK. “We are very keen to replicate what we’re doing with the Met across the country,” the spokesperson added.

Online retail sales were worth £27 billion last year and currently growing at over 10 per cent a year, according to the BRC.

Commander Allan Gibson said the Met is “determined to make sure crime does not pay but criminals do.”

“We want to show communities criminals who comfortably live off the proceeds of their crimes are being brought to justice. Working together we are stronger and we can get the better of criminals,” he added.

Much effort is going into the fight against cyber fraudsters. Earlier this year, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) announced the introduction of three regional e-crime policing centres in an effort to tackle cyber crime

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