SURREY’S police and crime commissioner has called for changes to the way cyber crime is tackled – after he himself became a victim of online fraud.

David Munro lost £4,000 to a scam traced back to Lagos, Nigeria after he was duped by a fake invoice forged to look like a contractor he was working with before he became a police and crime commissioner. 

But the former Farnham concillor said there needs to be a re-think around how cyber crime is tackled – calling on a national approach instead of it being the responsibility of individual forces to investigate. He added this will help provide more reassurances to victims. 

Mr Munro’s comments come after he admitted to being a victim of cyber crime at a police and crime meeting last week. Speaking after the meeting he said: “I believe the approach we have got in this country is fundamentally wrong.”

At the moment local police forces such as Surrey Police deal with cyber crime and fraud and there is a national system for dealing with larger and more serious cases of fraud. Mr Munro believes this should be reversed because “provincial police forces do not have the resources” to go after scammers. 

He added: “If it was standard procedure that all fraud was handled nationally they may have a database. Cyber fraud is on the increase and it would take a huge amount of extra resources to make a real difference.”

Mr Munro said his experience of cyber crime was two years ago when he was director of a small software company. He received an invoice from a regular contractor for £12,000 via email and paid it. But his bank alerted him to the fact that the account details were different. 

He was able to recover £8,000 back but lost the remaining £4,000. 

Mr Munro said: “What I should have done, but didn’t, was check very carefully the bank account details when I paid it.”

He said the invoice had the company logo on but the money ended up in a bank account in Lagos.

He added: “I did feel annoyed and a bit embarrassed.”

Figures from the Crime Survey of England and Wales published in a report by Surrey Police on cyber crime and fraud in May this year show that in Surrey fraud cases increased by 13 per cent from 5,441 in 2017 to 6,183 in 2018. The national increase was 11 per cent. 

Financial losses in Surrey between April and September 2018 was £22.5 million, up from £14.5m an year earlier.