[Johnyma22]

Britain being where the victims are, not the criminals.

Some reasons why Brits might be so so vulnerable:

* Major: English speaking so common to be targeted from less affluent ex-commonwealth countries.

* Major: Ageing population have most of the wealth.

* Major: Lots of vulnerable victims online and relatively high social media engagement.

* Major: Little fear of retaliation (other than Jim Browning). The UK is having less of an engagement in global policing (due to leaving Brexit) and has less reach as a consequence

* Minor: Degrading international relations. Less empathy shown towards Brits due to somewhat inward looking foreign policies over the past decades.

* Minor: Growing economic disparity causing a glut of "get rich quick" victims.

Honestly I think Jim Browning is showing how this problem is solved and is probably having a 100x impact over the average bank worker. The Banks should be funding him and others like him.

For those that don't know who Jim is, he does awesome work in identifying scammers and working with the local / relevant authorities into shutting their services down.

[oefrha]

From TFA:

> While security experts and senior bankers said many fraud attacks could be traced overseas - including from India and West Africa - Britain is also increasingly exporting attacks.

> ...

> "It's popular to say the fraud threat is imported into the UK, and I don't think that bears analysis," said NECC's Reed. "There is a significant UK nexus to a lot of fraud, our operational experience is showing that."

[avianlyric]

From personal experience working on this problem I would strongly agree with idea that a lot of bank fraud is home grown.

The police in the UK have a very poor track record of actually dealing with bank fraud. The nature of the crime, and way UK policing works, means there's a significant number of disincentives to actually investigating bank fraud. Two of the biggest showstoppers is location/jurisdiction and training, which police force should investigate? The one where the victim lives, or the one where the criminal lives? Police training focuses almost entirely on crimes with a physical element, if someone robbed your store, then the police know how to help. If they rob your bank account, they haven't foggiest on where to start that kind of investigation.

Additionally each individual case of fraud tends to be for small amounts (thousands to tens of thousands), so are frequently ignored. It's only in aggregate that the sums become meaningful to police, but they rarely consider fraud on anything other than a case-by-case basis. The result, as a bank we can tell the police exactly who commited a crime, where they live, what they look like, where they eat breakfast, what their social media handles are etc, and nothing will happen. The report and all the data vanishes into the blackhole known as the NCA.

[aix1]

This reminds me of how I used to get fake passports.

There was a period when almost every day I had Royal Mail drop through my letterbox envelopes containing various fake documents (passports, driving licences, National Insurance letters, ID cards from various EU counties). Someone was mailing those from a nearby post office and putting my address on the back of the envelopes as the sender. A fraction could not be delivered and got returned to the "sender", some having travelled to, and returned from, other countries.

I reported this several times, both to Action Fraud and to the police. At some point I spent an entire Friday evening sitting at a local police station, thinking that, if I brought the documents to them in person, the police would be less inclined to think I was some crackpot making the whole thing up. I also thought that the fact the documents were being mailed from a post office across the road from the police station might pique their interest (the letters had tracking numbers and so I could look up their journeys on the Royal Mail web site).

In the end this turned out to be a waste of time. The front-office police person were clearly pretty unhappy with having to deal with this, but escalated to someone who "knew more about these things". The latter applied the investigative method of typing "Portuguese driving licence" into Google Image Search and comparing the results with one of the licences I gave them. After a further escalation to an even more specialised officer, the conclusion was that the documents were indeed fake.

I got a crime reference number and a clear indication that I would never hear from them again, which I indeed haven't.

Still have all the docs (the police didn't want to keep them). They stopped coming after a while.

[123pie123]

another factor is cost - the police do not have enough resourses to investigate

a few weeks ago my car was hit and the driver just drove off without stopping to give details (hit and run) the incident was caught on my dashcam inc car reg plate and faces.

After informing the police on 101 - they said sorry they do not investigate hit and run anymore unless a serious injury has occured - no resources available

[blfr]

Why would brexit impact police interactions with other commonwealth countries. Or even global policing.

[simonh]

Because we lost access to many EU police databases and data sharing agreements. We negotiated continued access to some stuff, but there are still some significant gaps.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56529359

[Chris2048]

How are these databases used to police/punish the stereotypical Nigerian scammer?

[simonh]

I don't think that's a reasonable question, not all scammers are Nigerian. Some are based in the UK, others in Europe. Also the EU had data sharing agreements and collaboration outreach with police forces all over the world that we also lost access to.

That's one of the complications with our data sharing with the EU; they have agreements to share data with non-EU countries on the basis that their data is only shared within the EU, which we are now not. Therefore the EU can't grant us access to databases containing that data until we/they have permission from these other countries. We will, and are sorting it out but it's going to take time. Brexit was always going to come with some costs, that should be obvious even if you think on balance it was the right choice, and this is one of them.

[mdp2021]

The poster forgot the bunny quotes ("so-to-say") in «stereotypical "Nigerian scammer"», but added the term 'stereotypical' to lead you there, and the content was clear: certainly the poster did not express or suggest that «scammers are Nigerian». "Scotch tape" is from Minnesota, and the Scots are probably not that disturbed from the underlying idea of "Careful with that glue, Eugene! "Be a Scot", don't waste it". The Nigerian princes happened, terminology spawned, Nigeria has presumably not yet demanded that those scams should be called with Greek letters. Because we are not fools and we know losing one's head is not decapitation, and losing one's mind is not misplacing it on the wrong table. You know what's Eugene even if no-one's called Eugene, and if you don't you can get it's a cultural reference.

[tremon]

The intended interpretation is (Nigerian scam)mer, not (Nigerian) scammer; the scammers aren't Nigerian, the scam is. It refers to one of the earliest well-known forms of a type of e-mail scam: "Hello, I'm a Nigerian prince with a lots of funds but I can't access it, please send me $amount so I can get access and I will return it ten-fold".

[Chris2048]

> I don't think that's a reasonable question, not all scammers are Nigerian.

Than a non-sequitur, why would it matter? superbugs that originate in hospitals can escape and cause harm beyond a hospice; and if certain locales, Nigeria being the famous example of, are harder to touch, then those places will be selected-for for by scammers.

Consider that certain places are harder to police than others (which is basically the whole premise of this thread in the first place - than the EU is better policed than the UK); or that criminal operations could operate somewhere other then their place-of-origin.

> Some are based in the UK, others in Europe.

And if the European ones are more likely to get caught, there will be fewer of them, and a lot of those that remain won't operate locally.

> Also the EU had data sharing agreements and collaboration outreach

I don't doubt data-sharing is more difficult, I question if it makes any (long term) difference to remote (i.e. over the phone, or email) scams.

The question is how does that data relate to catching scammers who trivially outsource from elsewhere? Does the EU have any data on which EU companies run scams out of Nigeria[*0]? Even if the EU has a data-sharing agreement with Nigeria, I doubt the government even keeps tabs on the scammers. Plus, you can always move to wherever there isn't such a data-sharing agreement e.g. somewhere semi-hostile/antagonistic to Europe.

[0] SIDENOTE: I would mention somewhere other than Nigeria, so not as to seem to "pick on" the place, except - 1) Nigeria is established as famous for scams already, b) that would only make me more susceptible to downvotes from people triggered by me mentioning their somewhere-they-hold-dear in a negative light.

[denton-scratch]

> not all scammers are Nigerian

Of course not; but "stereotypical" ones are definitely Nigerian.

[phreeza]

Commonwealth should be unaffected, but if the perpetrator is in the EU, i guess it could be because British police can no longer access the Shengen information system (SIS) database, or issue European Arrest Warrants (EAW).

[Chris2048]

That's a big if - why would a scammer risk the liability of operating in the EU if they can trivially outsource to somewhere untouchable?

[Retric]

Because criminals operate in every country and the EU has a large and often English speaking population. It’s the same with the US/UK where plenty of scammers operate in each country while targeting the other. Email doesn’t care about national borders, it does care about language.

[Chris2048]

> because criminals operate in every country

Sure, they do, but what does that matter; or what does "operate" mean in this sense? You can outsource to elsewhere i.e. you can operate anywhere.

> the EU has a large and often English speaking population

So do many places, the EU is by no means unique in this respect. But there's a reason "cost centres" are being outsourced to India or the Philippines, more often than than the EU. And in the context of criminal operations, "language-speakers" is by far the least important/riskiest factor relative to those that would get you arreseted.

> It’s the same with the US/UK

Is it? Do you have (statistical) examples?

> Email doesn’t care about national borders

Wrt liability, (i.e. Arrest Warrants, the context of this thread) email, or at least the senders of, do care; more-so than language. Unless you are implying criminals care more about maximising profit than getting caught?

[PeterisP]

AFAIK Europol has been a significant factor in fighting online fraud because much of it is international and the same group targets many EU countries at once.

[BiteCode_dev]

It's also because the britanic banking system decided that, on the safety / usability balance, they would choose usability.

Banking in britanic banking system is way easier than anywhere else. I remember when I was a student, they sent a bus to the university, so we could just hop in, arrive at the bank, and open an account as an immigrant in 15 minutes.

Try to do that in France, you would get your card, what, next month at best?

It was only a matter of time before the criminals realize the door was unlocked and feast on them.

In fact, I'm expecting Australia to be next, for the very same reasons.

Have you tried to do any paper work in Australia ? It's. So. Simple. Seriously, for a french, it's a video game on easy mode, and you never leave the tutorial.

But there is trust everywhere.

They are either going down, or make the system harder to work with.

[calvinv]

Just an fyi, for at least the last 6 years it is very difficult for any kind of migrant to open an account

[jl6]

> Britain being where the victims are, not the criminals.

Britons could be the criminals too. It's easier to spearphish high value targets when using a familiar "trustworthy" accent and associated mannerisms and cultural knowledge.

[LatteLazy]

Also worth noting:

* UK infrastructure makes number spoofing very easy.

* UK banking legislation (and court rulings) put banks in a difficult position: they MUST accept a clients instruction to transfer money and do so rapidly (unless doing so would be a crime).

[avianlyric]

> they MUST accept a clients instruction to transfer money and do so rapidly (unless doing so would be a crime).

Not quite true. Banks are required to accept and process instructions quickly, the general idea being that bank should never prevent an individual from accessing their own money. But protecting a client from fraud is a legitimate reason for slowing down a transaction, you just can't delay it indefinitely. There are plenty of UK banks that will delay outbound bank payments by up to 24 hours if they think there's a good chance someone is being defrauded.

[pjc50]

I would be interested in knowing which court rulings those are.

[LatteLazy]

Some of the more recent judgements are outlined here:

https://www.mondaq.com/uk/financial-services/1056304/uk-high...

But it goes all the way back to common law. Basically the bank is a customers agent and must obey instructions to the best of its ability. It must exercise reasonable skill etc obeying those instructions. But unless it suspects fraud it cannot disobey. To quote: a bank is not required to act as an amateur detective.

There is very little room for them to decline a customer instruction once given. It needs to be pretty blatant fraud or otherwise illegal. Sending money to another account is neither on the face of it.

[accnumnplus1]

Nothing so complicated. With open borders the UK was a popular destination - and the training ground, and work environment. Now lockdowns have forced people to double down. Some below mentioned the infamous Nigerians, it's usually the Albanian region.

[franga2000]

Yeah, Jim Browning definitely needs to go teach law enforcement how to do their job, preferably in exchange for the biggest consulting cheque the world has ever seen.

Ths problem, as always, is that they don't actually want to do that. They'd rather stay incompetent because it lets them let criminals off more easily. We have the same problem where I live but with illegal work for often far below minimum wage. The cops and tax inspectors keep saying they're understaffed, underfunded and undertrained to do anything about the problem, yet two journalism students have been able to catch and report more cases of illegal working conditions than the inspectors do in one year.

I used to wonder why, until I saw one of the main white collar cops in the city having a beer with the dude that I know for a fact regularly pays people minimum wage then has them give him half of it back in cash or they're fired. I asked around and it turns out they're childhood friends so he lets him do whatever. And we're not even close to the higher half of the corruption index! I can't imagine how things work in a country that's worse off...

[jl6]

Did you report the wage theft crime that you suspected?

[franga2000]

I didn't have any proof, only the word of a few people that were still working for him and couldn't afford to lose their jobs.

I do however know that he was reported and investigated at least once by a former employee, but the investigation unsurprisingly found no proof ("agreements" were all verbal and everything was done in cash). The cops said that with just one testimony a conviction was unlikely and nothing really came of it.

In general, these things rarely get resolved because the worker can't risk snitching because they'd lose their only source of income and once they leave and get a better job, they're just happy it's behind them and don't pursue it further.