VMO2 calls for a dedicated fraud minister

Professional fraud gangs are ‘persistently and aggressively targeting the public’, says VMO2, and cites research from Strand Partners which says 69% of Brits report that they’ve been targeted by scammers.

The operator says it obtained some Freedom of Information (FOI) requests from the Crown Prosecution Service, Action Fraud and police forces in England and Wales, which ‘reveal that in many cases, victims are being denied any real chance of justice.’

“Whilst there are multiple policing agencies working on fraud, the responsibility to investigate most fraud reports falls on the 43 individual police forces in England and Wales,” says the release. “The public is directed to report to Action Fraud – the National Fraud and Cybercrime reporting centre – which pass reports on to the relevant force. Yet only 1 in 20 (6%) cases reported to Action Fraud ever reached police forces for investigation in the 2023/2024 financial year and for those that did, few resulted in charges.”

According to the operator’s digging, on average each police force brought forward cases which resulted in 84 convictions last year, but it points out that the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated there were more than 3.1 million fraud incidents in that time.

VMO2 certainly seems to have got stuck in on the issue – claiming it has hired former police officers to investigate prolific fraudsters and submitted 34 police-compliant evidence packs over the past two years. It has only been made aware of two successful prosecutions, we’re told.

All this is background for what the operator is calling on the government to do about it, which is appoint a dedicated fraud minister and create a ‘single centralised, specialised and properly resourced national policing body’ responsible for investigating all instances of fraud.

It claims this will bring together fraud specialists, enabling them to act across borders, share data and draw on local expertise. It also wants to see this body equipped with sufficient new officers to better match the number of fraud cases ‘at least doubling the existing commitment in the Fraud Strategy (i.e. from 400 to 800)’.

“Fraud is at epidemic levels, with organised gangs of fraudsters operating professional call centres which relentlessly target Brits every second of every day,” said Rob Orr, Chief Operations Officer at Virgin Media O2. “We’re constantly building our defences higher and sharing compelling evidence of what these gangs are up to but with no real deterrent in place, these criminals can repeatedly steal free from the threat of prosecution.”

“Despite their best efforts, dedicated police officers are handcuffed to working through a patchwork of local forces, many of which lack the specialist skills and teams needed. Too often, this leaves them unable to act – even on slam-dunk cases. To help turn the tide, we urgently need Government to appoint a minister responsible for fraud and address the structural problems by creating a centralised, specialised and properly resourced national body to handle all instances of fraud to tackle this complex, cross-border crime.”

The operator also says it has invested millions in counter fraud measures to combat criminals looking to steal high value phones which are resold internationally where they can’t be blocked.

To that point, there has been a bit of finger pointing between the telco industry and government as to whose job it is to come up with solutions to rising rates of phone theft.  Last year, London Mayor Sadiq Khan called on operators and device manufacturers to “play their part and deliver bold and innovative technological solutions to help tackle the rising number of robberies in the capital.”

The announcement stated “more can be and should be done” by the mobile phone industry to make it harder for stolen phones to be sold on, repurposed by vendors and re-used illegally.

One anonymous source at a UK operator told Telecoms.com at the time: “Suggesting mobile phone operators aren’t doing enough to tackle street robbery is like blaming Kellogg’s for people shoplifting at Tesco. The Met doesn’t understand the problem and the Mayor needs to get a grip rather than asking the mobile industry to tackle his shortcomings.”