Most cyber criminals are getting off scot free because the police “don’t give a stuff” about online fraud, and would rather catch someone speeding because it is easier to prove, according to a leading lawyer.
Speaking at an event in London, Tim Buckingham, a partner in the Financial Services Dispute Resolution team at Eversheds LLP, claimed that prosecuting somebody for Internet-based credit card fraud is “really, really complicated and It takes a lot of time and effort.”
Buckingham added: “It’s an immense source of frustration for me that the police really don’t seem to give a stuff about credit card fraud.
“They’d rather catch me speeding, doing 35mph in a 30 zone – prosecuting me, that’s an easy win.
“Skimming and all those things, they tend to capture the guy working in the shop who’s skimming the cards, they don’t catch the fraudsters because they’re in a completely different jurisdiction.”
Buckingham said that despite the fact that intelligence is being shared to try to identify cyber gangs, if somebody from China, Indonesia or Nigeria hacked into companies’ systems, “it’s going to be pretty well impossible to prosecute the people concerned”.
