Londoners 'disproportionately' affected by fraud

Londoners are "disproportionately" affected by increasingly sophisticated fraud operations, senior police figures have warned.

At a police and crime committee meeting at City Hall this week, officials said fraud was on the rise - accounting for 41% of all crimes across England and Wales - with online scams particularly prevalent in London.

Speaking to the London Assembly, the City of London Police said some 40% of fraud victims nationally are in the capital, with the Met Police suggesting this includes 60% of all courier fraud cases..

Officials also warned that the increased use of AI in scams allows criminals to stay one step ahead of both public awareness and the law.

Oliver Little from the City of London Police told the committee: "We've seen an acceleration in people using technology to enable fraud – it allows [them] to target a much wider number of people, and then it's a numbers game.

"It also puts more barriers between us and them and obfuscates who they really are.

"[With] the 'Hi Mum' scams over text message, there's the potential to use technology to turn that into a realistic voice, so people will be more easily manipulated," he added.

The scam involves fraudsters texting victims, pretending to be their child who has lost their phone and has a new number, in order to trick them into sending money.

Little said that many "basic frauds" are still effective, but fraudsters will "use systems to increase the surface area of their attack".

"It's always shifting and changing," he said, adding there is a "fraud arms race".

Will Lyne, head of economic and cybercrime at the Met, said: "London, we think, is disproportionately affected by [cyber crime]."

He also laid out the possibility that there may not need to be a human manually carrying out scams on victims once they engage with mass phishing or fraud messages.

Lyne told assembly members: "We are not seeing AI run end-to-end fraud models, but we are seeing it used as a tool that optimises the scale and sophistication of steps within the fraud business model. This includes fraud models that require access to victims' machines, for example.

"We're not saying AI is out there running fraud operations on behalf of criminals – but there is a realistic probability we're going to get there in the future."

For now, though, Londoners are falling victim to more rudimentary scams at an alarming rate, Rory Innes, chief executive of The Cyber Helpline, said.

All criminals need at the moment is a "phone, an email account and a social media account – that is enough to cause devastating impacts, including loss of life, loss of finances, mental health", he said.

He echoed concerns about scams becoming even more sophisticated in future, adding: "If you think about how easy it is to get a clip of someone, and create a voice, an identity – there are scary threats coming down the line, but there's already threats now which are devastating and victims need more support."

Lyne explained there were currently six "priority fraud types" that pose the greatest risk to Londoners – romance fraud, courier fraud, investment fraud, abuse of position fraud, payment diversion and card and payment fraud.

"It can be very unclear about what type of scam someone is falling victim to until it has happened," he said.

Lyne also claimed that criminals are increasingly using cryptocurrency, with the digital payment system, now featuring in at least a third of investment fraud reports in London.

Asked about what police can do to combat this increased sophistication, Lyne admitted that forces will "always be playing catch up" and that "education" around different online scams is "the right thing to do" to save potential victims.

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, which covers councils and other public service organisations.

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