Cyber crime victims refuse to hand over computers for police analysis as backlog creates year-long delays

Researchers find one police force has nine-month backlog, despite spending £180,000 on outsourcing the work

Victims have told officers they are not willing to accept a year of disruption while waiting for overwhelmed specialists to extract information (Getty)

Victims of cyber crime are refusing to hand over their computers to police for analysis because a substantial backlog means that they could be deprived of them for months.

Researchers found that one police force had a nine-month backlog of devices waiting to be examined, despite spending £180,000 on outsourcing the work to the private sector.

Delays of up to 12 months to examine devices were not uncommon, according to the report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary.

Victims have told officers they are not willing to accept a year of disruption while waiting for overwhelmed specialists to extract information.

“We cannot afford backlogs and we cannot afford to outsource,” a senior officer said.

The report provides the latest evidence of delays and failures to properly investigate the fast-growing area of crime. One person in the UK falls victim to a fraud or a cyber attack every four seconds.

Inspectors reported earlier this year how an alleged paedophile had fled to the Czech Republic during the three years it took for police to examine his computer.

The man – who had attacked his partner – had his computer seized in March 2011 after the woman said that he had indecent images of children on it. That was only confirmed in January 2014, by which time the man had left the UK.

In another case, a sex offender fled to Spain to avoid prosecution and computers were seized from his home in 2012. An officer was asked three times to compile a file of evidence against the fugitive, but more than two years later it had not been done.

“Having hundreds of computers in a backlog awaiting full examination does not support the victim and undoubtedly does not do anything to prevent further crime,” said the report Real lives, Real crimes, released today. It said there were “significant backlogs” with specialist units unable to cope with the demand.

The report also said that forces were losing opportunities to claw back money from fraud because of the time it took to start proper inquiries. Total losses reported to Action Fraud – the national central point for collecting details of online crime – amounted to £3.5bn in the year to 2015.

The report said that police officers might only have a window of about 24 hours to act, before money was transferred from UK bank accounts. But it found that it took 30 days on average before it was allocated to an investigator.

“This delay presents a substantial opportunity to the offender who has the ability to generate a complex money trail, often involving bank accounts outside the jurisdiction, to salt away the fraudulently-obtained funds,” the report found.

An examination of cases found that officers lacked empathy with the victims, and had even turned down the offer of evidence that had been carefully collected by the victim.

Stephen Kavanagh, the police chief responsible for digital investigations, said: “More still needs to be done.”