UK launches landmark 'Report Fraud' service to tackle cybercrime and fraud

British authorities on Tuesday formally launched Report Fraud, a new national service aimed at overhauling how fraud and cybercrime victims contact police and how those incidents are subsequently investigated.

The new system is intended to win back public trust over how law enforcement tackles what are now the most common crime types across the country, accounting for roughly half of all recorded offences and costing the economy billions of pounds each year.

“Cyber crime and fraud are the crimes most likely to affect people in this country, yet too often victims feel unsure where to turn or what will happen if they make a report. Report Fraud is a landmark step forward,” said Pete O’Doherty, Commissioner of the City of London Police.

“The service puts victims first, gives them a clear national front door to policing, and strengthens our ability, and that of every police force, to identify, disrupt and pursue the criminals behind these offences. This is not just a new service; it is a major upgrade to the UK’s defences against economic crime.”

Although the public-facing portal was given a soft launch in December, the City of London Police — the platform’s parent force — is now formally announcing Report Fraud is operational. A national advertising campaign promoting the message “Every Report Counts” is set to run across radio and social media, stressing to people that their reports help protect others.

Authorities want to ensure the public uses the platform at a scale where it can make an impact. Multiple delays to the service have been driven by ensuring it does not suffer from the same reputation as its predecessor, Action Fraud, which was widely deemed “not fit for purpose.”

Victims of cybercrime and fraud who submit information to Report Fraud will now be contacted and updated when that material contributes to an investigation. This is expected to stand in stark contrast to the experience of using the predecessor service when victims were given a crime reference number and often left in the dark — except in the extremely exceptional occasion when a detective was assigned their case.

“This service has been years in the making, shaped by victims, frontline officers, industry and government partners,” said Chris Bell, service delivery director for the City of London Police. “It reduces the burden on people when they report, provides clearer advice and reassurance, and generates richer intelligence that can be acted on quickly to stop cyber crime and fraud in their tracks.” 

It follows major criticism of how the British government responds to fraud, with a parliamentary committee calling for “a wholesale change in philosophy and practice” back in 2022, noting only 2% of police funding is dedicated to combating fraud despite it then accounting for 40% of reported crime.

Replacing the national reporting center for fraud and cybercrime was a key part of that change under the government’s previous fraud strategy. The delivery of that replacement, contracted to PwC and Capita, faced multiple delays. Capita left the project last May. A City of London Police spokesperson said the decision not to continue with the partnership was made by mutual agreement.

“Sometimes these things don’t work out,” explained Bell. “Highly innovative products, highly innovative projects, sometimes need different people and so the parties got together and decided that for the future of both it was better to walk away from that particular agreement.”

Capita did not respond to a request for comment.

The kill chain

One of the key differences with Report Fraud is the analytics platform at the heart of the system, including Palantir’s Foundry system and other off-the-shelf services provided by companies including Microsoft. The City of London Police hope to add new sophisticated analytics capabilities in the coming months and years.

Jonathan Frost, an expert who formerly worked at the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau for more than a decade and is now a director at fraud prevention business BioCatch, previously told Recorded Future that the key aspect of tackling fraud and cybercrime was ensuring that the technology and telecoms sectors were active in disrupting criminal operations.

Speaking to journalists on Monday, the government’s minister for tackling fraud, Lord Hanson, said the government aims to launch its new fraud strategy in February. It will stress information sharing between law enforcement and security services and the businesses that are involved in fraud, with a focus on driving action from technology and telecoms companies to disrupt those crimes, he said.

Detective Superintendent Oliver Little said: “It’s not realistic to have a model that responds to fraud where the predominant response is locking people up in a traditional criminal justice way.”

The new system, which works in real time — “previously we were looking at batch exchanges, inefficient processes,” explained Little — will help create information packages that can be sent outside of policing to industry partners to drive forward their actions.

“There are only two ways out of this: reduce the financial gains made by criminals — reduce their incentives — and also to push up their costs,” said Frost. 

“The two domains in which you can push up their costs are telco and tech, by creating lots of friction for them and stopping them getting access to victims,” added Frost. “The real question for Report Fraud is how it’s going to support, encourage and require other parts in that kill chain to do their part.”

Having a scalable method to disrupt high-volume tech-enabled fraud means that investigative resources can be spent “dealing with the people who are the most harmful, that we’re bringing together all of the information so that we’ve got the totality of their offending,” said Little.

He stressed that enormous amounts of harm is caused by the kinds of crimes that Report Fraud will build intelligence on, from romance scams to courier and investment fraud through to ransomware attacks and cybercriminals compromising business emails to reroute payments into accounts they control.

“Sometimes we look at the numbers of victims and the statistics and you lose sight of the human story behind it, which means you can kind of get inured to it,” he said. “But there’s no doubt that it has a devastating impact on people, and sadly some people have lost their lives as a result of fraud.”

Lord Hanson stressed: “Every fraud report matters — it is the first line of defence for yourself and others. Fraud can target anyone at any time, so we will continue to step up efforts to ensure the UK remains the hardest place for scammers to operate.”