Cybercrime – Great Britain, Online Banking Fraud Center

The disaster for Anna began with an advertisement for an electric toothbrush. In a matter of weeks, cybercriminals stole 78 200,000 from a 78-year-old widow. “I’m still very shocked,” Anna says, not wanting to give her full name. “Feelings of guilt and shame cannot be described.”

There is nowhere else in the world of online analogy as there is in the UK. The high-speed tariff infrastructure, relatively loose controls and the fact that English is the most widely used language make the country an Eldorado for fraudsters.

“In the last twelve months we have seen more fraud cases than ever before,” said Aiolet Picker-Levine, a management consulting firm that specializes in cybercrime. “The most sophisticated fraud systems started in the UK and moved to the US about two years later, and then around the world.” In the first half of the year, fraudsters spent 4 754 million – equivalent to $ 1 billion – in the UK, according to data from the banking association UK Finance. This is 30 percent more than it was a year ago and 60 percent more than the start of recordings in 2017. Fraud cases are becoming more and more sophisticated, as Biger-Levine explains. Hackers stole large amounts of personal information from consumers on the Internet, which were later used by fraudsters.

Minutes after registering her bank account details while ordering the electric toothbrush online, pensioner Anna received a call from her bank saying she had been caught by a fraudster. The next day, Robert Clayton, one of the UK’s financial regulators, called the FCA and promised that the perpetrators would be held accountable. But your savings may be lost. It was part of the fraud because it later changed. No toothbrushing and Robert Clayton. Not sure if Anna can look back on her money.

Fake websites

“We saw the fraudster act as someone else for three or four years and talk to that person on the phone before stealing a substantial amount from that person,” said Brian Dilli, chairman of the Economic Crime Prevention Committee. Lloyds, the largest bank in the UK. Dinah Kariya lost £ 10,000 in early February when she allegedly bought a bond allegedly issued by Swiss bank Credit Suisse through the comparison website Money Supermarket. She suspects she landed on a fake website.

The original provider of MoneySuperMarket issued a warning in mid-February against cloned websites containing phone numbers accessible to fraudsters. The company works with the FDA and reported the incident to police. Barclays, Caria’s home bank, has only repaid half of the money so far, and he said he should have been more careful. Barclays said the case is being investigated and results await.

One point to attack fraudsters is the fastest online payment method in Great Britain. Transactions between bank accounts are made in a matter of seconds and do not take hours or even days as in the United States and other countries. “Fast payment systems can commit fraud quickly in the first place,” says Richard Emery, who advises Anna and 63 fraud victims, who have lost an average of 2 102,000. Pay.UK, the company that operates the payment network, said the UK economy, consumers and businesses would benefit greatly from the pace. But criminals are better at misusing digitization for their own purposes. The company is working with the authorities against fraud.

The support of the police is very low

British banks are also increasingly trying to control the damage – and for selfish ends. As a rule, they are responsible for the losses of their customers. HSBC Bank has hired 300 new employees in a single year to prevent and detect fraud. “The UK is a breeding ground for fraudsters,” the bank explains. The UK accounts for about 80 per cent of the company’s global losses due to retail fraud.

Lloyds says it has invested around 100 100 million in regulatory bodies over the past two years. In the Northeast, only 10 percent of employees – 6,000 people – deal with financial crime issues.

Banks are also pressuring the British government to hold social networking sites such as Google, Amazon and Facebook accountable. According to him, online fraud often starts. The government agency NECC complains that there is not enough support from the police to fight financial crime. Chris Reid of the NECC says only one per cent of police resources are dedicated to combating fraud, despite accounting for one-third of all crime in the UK and Wales. “The available evidence is not commensurate with the size and severity of the fraud cases. There is still a huge mountain to climb.”

(Reuters)