New fraud reporting centre gets green light

Consumers will be able to report online fraud directly to a central police
organisation within months.

Reporting changes introduced last April mean consumers are meant to report
online crimes such as card and cheque fraud to their bank only. However a
new police unit, The National Fraud Reporting Centre, will take reports of
these and other online frauds, such as advanced fee scams, via a dedicated call centre.

How these reports will be handled afterwards will be the remit of another
new organisation, the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB). This
organisation will multi-agency.

Reports say this body will decide where information received from the public should be directed within the UK's fraud-investigation forces.

The NFRC will be run by the City of London police and also liaise closely
with another new division, the Police Central E-crime unit (PCEU). This new unit
will be part of the Metropolitan Police.

However there are concerns that the PCEU will be overwhelmed by the task
facing it. It has only received £7m funding over three years.

Although the Home Office has admitted that the PCEU will not provide a single line of reporting for hi-tech crimes from the country’s 44 local forces, it still
has a huge range of responsibilities.

This funding has to cover working not only with the NFRC but also the
National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA). With the NPIA it aims to help
identify how any e-crime reports, that are made to local forces are handled. It will also work with the NPIA to help train police officers to deal with cybercrimes more effectively.

With this wide remit, Gareth Elliott, policy adviser at the British Chambers of Commerce, said: " It is a step in the right direction but £7m does not seem like very much compared to the cost of cybercrime”; UK consumers lost £302m to card fraud alone in the first six months of this year according to Apacs, the UK’s payments association.

Despite the concerns about the PCEU’s funding, the British Banking Association, Get Safe Online and Apacs welcomed the new initiatives.

Tony Neate, Managing Director, Get Safe Online said “Get Safe Online welcomes the newly formed Police Central e-Crime Unit.

"We believe that any initiative aimed at tackling online fraud is a good idea and we will work alongside the unit and continue our job of educating the public on using
the internet safely.

“It is important that the UK stays one step ahead of internet crime and new initiatives are vital in achieving this.”

The Home Office admitted that “the finer details” of how the new police bodies will work together still have to be worked out. However trials of the NFRC will begin soon according to Metropolitan Police Service detective superintendent Charlie McMurdie. It and the PCEU will launch officially next year. Eventually it is hoped to add online reporting facilities for the NFRC as well as the call centre