UK's Fraud Bureau Criticized for Inadequate Response to Crypto Scams
Summary:
The UK’s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) is being accused of not being adequately prepared to handle crypto-related crimes. After falling victim to a scam that cost him approximately $46,000, a UK resident known as Martin claims that the NFIB failed to take the necessary steps to recover his stolen funds. Despite acquiring a detailed report on the fraud from a blockchain analytics firm and continuously updating his Action Fraud report, Martin alleges that the authorities have yet to take significant action. His experience raises questions about the UK's capacity to handle and police crypto fraud as digital currencies continue becoming more prevalent.
There are growing concerns that the UK's National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) might not be suitably equipped to handle crypto-related crimes targeting UK residents. A UK resident who fell prey to a crypto scam brought this up, claiming a loss of roughly $46,000 to a fraudster pretending to be a Ledger employee. Despite alerting the NFIB, he alleges that the agency did little to recover the stolen assets.
Martin, who has withheld his full identity, was called by the impersonator who told him he was a Ledger staff member on September 28, 2023. The fraudster convinced Martin that someone was attempting to access his cryptocurrency using his recovery phrase and his Ledger device could be upgraded to "security level 3" if specific steps were followed. Unfortunately, these steps facilitated the scam, involving Martin pasting the con artist's crypto addresses and confirming transactions which led to the digital currency being sent to the impersonator. The fraudster made off with nearly a Bitcoin (valued around $40,000 at the time) and 4,000 RNDR tokens (worth $6,080), according to Martin.
The fraudster's transactions could have been traced as they transferred Martin's funds to Roobet, a known gambling platform based in Curacao. Notably, Roobet could have potentially frozen the funds, but it would first require an official request from the victim's local law enforcement. When Martin reached out to Roobet, he was informed of this requirement.
In response, Martin reported the fraud using the City of London's Action Fraud reporting platform in order for the NFIB to be notified. Disappointingly, he received no response from the agency until about a month later, on October 17, 2023, stating that it couldn't identify a course of inquiry to be pursued by a UK law enforcement agency.
After reaching out to Binance, Martin learned that some of his funds were laundered through Binance but had since been moved. He was advised that Binance could fully cooperate with law enforcement agencies if need be. Desperate to have his funds frozen, Martin paid $1,000 to AML Bot, a blockchain analytics platform, to analyze the scam. He added the analysis report to his Action Fraud report, however, as of January 30, the city has yet to respond.
Martin provided evidence to support his claims, including the original complaint, emails between him and the NFIB and Roobet, transcripts of phone conversations with the impostors, and more. He suggests that he might not be the only victim struggling with the NFIB's lack of crypto fraud handling capabilities. Citing that the Action Fraud form lacks fields for crypto addresses and transaction hashes, it appears difficult to report such crimes. He also pointed out that despite a 2019 report revealing inconsistent policing of fraud claims in the UK, and another stating that only 2% of police funds are allocated to fraud crimes, despite accounting for 40% of total crimes, little has been done to improve the situation. The NFIB did not provide a comment when approached by Cointelegraph.
Published At
2/2/2024 5:00:00 PM
Disclaimer: Algoine does not endorse any content or product on this page. Readers should conduct their own research before taking any actions related to the asset, company, or any information in this article and assume full responsibility for their decisions. This article should not be considered as investment advice. Our news is prepared with AI support.
Do you suspect this content may be misleading, incomplete, or inappropriate in any way, requiring modification or removal?
We appreciate your report.