The volume of suspected fraud offences reported by financial institutions, including services such as Revolut, has been so large over the last 18 months that tens of thousands of reports have yet to be processed, The Irish Times has learned.
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has indefinitely paused the publication of any further quarterly or annual national crime trends until the true extent of fraud in the Republic is better understood and more accurately captured.
Sources said the number of unprocessed reports of suspected fraud is likely between 20,000 and 30,000, even though the new mechanism for collecting the reports was only put in place in August 2023. However, gardaí also believe many other frauds, or attempts, were simply never reported to them by the financial institutions for many years.
Though there is concern at the sheer scale of the backlog of unprocessed reports, Garda sources said now that reporting by financial institutions has gathered pace, the crimes being referred to the force should offer a rich vein of intelligence.
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For example, they will contain information about the same suspects being linked to multiple crimes. This should enable gardaí identify fraudsters working together and funnelling the proceeds of their crimes back to senior, or controlling, figures in their criminal networks.
The large backlog of cases has arisen following changes the Garda made in the summer of 2023, reminding financial institutions of their legal obligation to report frauds or face prosecution, and working with them to generate reports. The Garda National Economic Crime Bureau in August 2023 established a unit to take receipt of the reports, confirming which ones were criminal in nature and recording and assigning them for investigation.
[ Garda ‘stretched’ as online fraud reaches ‘industrial’ levels, Drew Harris warnsOpens in new window ]
However, as more banks and other financial institutions, as well as virtual asset service providers (Vasps) such as Revolut came on board, the number of reports being made increased very quickly. The volume has been added to by the financial institutions putting more resources, particularly technology, in place to make referrals more efficiently.
Garda sources said some of the cases in the backlog may have already been reported to gardaí. Such cases would already be captured in the approximate 12,000 fraud offences crimes recorded by the Garda annually in recent years and assigned for investigation.
However, in other cases victims of frauds may have had lost sums returned to them by their bank, with neither the victim nor financial institution reporting the matter for investigation. Other cases, sources added, were likely attempted frauds, often blocked by banks, that resulted in no financial loss but should have been referred for investigation.
These include fraudsters running scams based on bogus emails, texts and phone calls to obtain bank account and payment card numbers and then trying to steal money from those accounts.
There is also concern frauds, both successful and thwarted, involving very large sums of money that warranted immediate and significant investigation may be hidden among the large volume of unprocessed cases.
The Irish Times understands there is annoyance in Garda Headquarters that the publication of all crime data has been paused even though fraud is the only crime type impacted by the backlog issue.
In reply to queries, the CSO said no time frame was in place for the resumption of national crime data being published.
Garda Headquarters said the issue relating to the backlog in unprocessed fraud reports “was notified to the CSO by An Garda Síochána as part of established engagement process around data quality and assurance”.
“As a result of the large volume and complexity of these referral reports, there is a backlog in reviewing them. This is resulting in delays identifying the associated new crime incidents and recording them on Pulse.”
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