Astronomical costs, geopolitical headaches: Telecom fraud is too big to ignore, report says
International telecommunications fraud — a broad category that includes everything from consumer scams to corporate ripoffs — costs over €29 billion (roughly $33 billion) per year, according to a report published Thursday by Europol and Trend Micro. The fraud isn’t just costly, it’s also endlessly frustrating for the companies and for law enforcement, the report’s authors say. The illicit activities range from tricking individuals into divulging their personal information to perpetrating international revenue share fraud — a complex scheme inspired in part by traditional money laundering techniques. “Geopolitically, most telecom crime tends to be addressed by the telecom companies themselves,” the report states. “The costs are absorbed as the cost of doing business. This creates a kind of isolation, however. Without thorough cross-border intelligence sharing and intelligence fusion with law enforcement, the source, investigative method, and evidence cannot be connected in a way that results in a meaningful number of arrests […]
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