Police are following up fewer than one in 100 frauds as cybercrime overwhelms the authorities.
An investigation by The Times has found that the scale of offending is so great that officers rely on a computer program to assess whether cases are worth following up.
Fraudsters are acting with virtual impunity, experts say, while their victims’ lives are sometimes ruined. Most cybercrime either goes unreported or is ignored by “inadequate” police who deem the likelihood of conviction too remote, it is claimed.
There have been an estimated 3.2 million frauds over the past year but fewer than 9,000 convictions. Campaigners described the figures as an outrage. Since 2013 victims have been told to report cases to Action Fraud, an arm of the Home Office, rather