TSB funds fraud police after ‘phishing’ attacks

TSB customers were targeted by fraudsters following an IT meltdown in April
PA
Justin Davenport4 December 2018
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TSB is to help fund fraud detectives because it says there are not enough officers to investigate scammers.

The bank will give £200,000 to the Met which will be used by police in three south-east London boroughs: Lewisham, Bexley and Greenwich.

TSB customers were targeted by fraudsters following an IT meltdown in April. Organised crime groups took advantage of a failed security upgrade by using scammers to send phishing emails to bank customers. More than 1,300 lost money, the bank said.

Ashley Hart, head of fraud at TSB, said the bank realised after the incident that police were “overwhelmed” by the number of fraud investigations they faced. He said the problem starts when the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, which compiles fraud reports, passes the information on to local forces.

“The NFIB package up intel and send it out to police forces to make arrests and that’s where we discovered it all goes a bit wrong,” Mr Hart said.

“With frontline policing and the nature of its resource constraints, it means these packages were arriving and there were not enough police officers to do anything with them.”

The Met said the £200,000 will help fund overtime for fraud investigators, training, and new initiatives raising awareness of scams. TSB could provide more funding if the trial is successful.

Superintendent Sean McDermid, of the South East Basic Command Unit, said: “If we can increase the number of arrests it will be a real plus but it is also about engagement and education.”

TSB said it had identified more than 180 suspects in connection with the fraud attacks on its customers. There have been 20 arrests in the UK.

Met Commissioner Cressida Dick recently said her priority was to tackle violent crime and that offences such as online fraud were a lower priority.

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