Fraud has risen to the highest level in five years after pandemic restrictions exacerbated cybercrime.
Between April and December last year 12,500 frauds were recorded, an increase of more than 25 per cent on the previous year and a 75 per cent increase on the five-year average.
Tim Mairs, an assistant chief constable with Police Scotland, said that many online frauds had been perpetrated by “people in Africa” or outside Scotland as he described the growing case numbers as a “massive shift”.
“What is really scary about that is we know a lot of people don’t report fraud so we can reasonably anticipate that rate is higher,” he told a meeting of the Scottish Police Authority, the body which holds Police Scotland to account.
A report by the force said that “continued restrictions and limitations” during the pandemic and increased dependence on technology for work and social lives had “exacerbated long-term increases of cyber-enabled crime”.
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“This increase in fraud, and other cyber-enabled crimes, demonstrates that online policing is increasingly a key part of frontline policing,” Fiona Taylor, a deputy chief constable, said.
Police Scotland said it was training staff to help prevent such crimes and respond more effectively to them.
