Interview with Assistant Commissioner Peter O’Doherty City of London Police
– Lead for Fraud & Cyber Crime
W
e met with Assistant Commissioner Peter
O’Doherty, City of London Police, who has responsibility for leading the UK policing response to fraud and cyber crime.
As the lead force for fraud, his remit includes Action Fraud, the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, the National Fraud and Cyber Crime Academy, and numerous specialist fraud investigation teams. Peter provided insight into the continuing rapid growth of the crime threats, and how the police are evolving their capabilities at a very quick pace to respond, with a shift in focus to prevention and disruption.
How would you describe today’s threat from fraud and cyber crime?
The threat is huge, complex and growing. Over half of all crime now is fraud and cyber crime and that's reflected in the Crime Survey for England and Wales and, in my view, it is still heavily under-reported. The highest estimation of the cost of fraud is from Experian at £193 billion a year – and I believe that in reality, it is likely to be much higher than this.
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Businesses, in particular, don't report cyber and fraud as much as would we like them to. This is for a variety of reasons: commercial sensitivities, maybe a lack of faith in the system or lack of awareness around where to report and whether the police will be interested. There is a view that policing prioritises individual victims – this isn’t as true as it used to be and policing wants to provide the best service it can for business victims. Every victim from an individual through to a large corporate deserves and needs a service. We also need to challenge the perception that if a big business is victimised they can afford it and there’s no real victim.
I’ll share one statistic to also explain how citizens are impacted when businesses lose money. According to the Association of British Insurers, every year as a result of insurance fraud, all of our premiums go up by £50. If we assume each of the 67 million people in the UK have an insurance policy at £50 per person, that's about £335 million a year.
Fraud and cyber crime also make a big impact on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) – there are over 5 million SMEs in the UK. Statistics show that almost half of SMEs will go out of business following a cyberattack.
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How are rapid advances in technology influencing fraud and cyber crime?
Today we know that much of our lives is largely online. There are 25 billion devices currently connected to the internet and this is predicted to be as high as 125 billion in the next five years. The Internet of Things means you can control everything from your fridge to your security system from an app on your phone. We have the evolution of smart cities where everything is digitally driven. All these changes, while providing huge improvements in the quality of living, equally provide opportunities for crime.
There is also the continued globalisation of people, goods and services and changing social norms. Many young people are now buying and using crypto currencies such as NFTs – non fungible tokens - and it’s predicted that everyone under 25 will be on the metaverse for one hour per day in the future.
How is the cost-of-living crisis making an impact on crime?
As the economy is squeezed, people get more desperate to survive. We’ve heard the phrase ‘heat or eat’. This may push some people into difficult decisions and to start to commit low level cyber crime. It’s so easy to get hold of assets, recycled malware for example. You can
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