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‘Coronavirus crime’ sees spike in UK, Europe
Eurojust, an EU-wide agency dealing with crime, said it has taken action in various cases of online fraud and computer hacking by criminal organisations abusing the current crisis.
From alleged suppliers of masks in Asia conning buyers in Germany, to Britons spitting and coughing on essential workers, to others deliberately flouting social distancing rules – crime related to the coronavirus pandemic has shown a spike in recent days.
Eurojust, an EU-wide agency dealing with crime, said it has taken action in various cases of online fraud and computer hacking by criminal organisations abusing the current crisis. This includes fake sales of protective face masks and hand gels.
For example, in Germany, authorities uncovered a large-scale fraud with an offer of 10 million face masks for a price of EUR 15 million, for which one German state had shown interest. Alleged suppliers in Asia were supposed to deliver the masks to a German sales company, via other European distributors, to be finally handed over in The Netherlands.
The perpetrators tricked the German sales company into paying an advance of EUR 2.4 million to accounts in other European countries. On the day of the planned delivery in The Netherlands, it became clear that the German sales company had become the victim of fraud.
In the UK, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has charged and prosecuted several individuals in recent days, including those who threatened emergency workers using coronavirus as a pretext, or spat and coughed on nurses, doctors and shopkeepers.
Releasing details of recent prosecutions, Max Hill of the CPS said: “Although this is only a small sample of the cases that we have prosecuted over the last week, it clearly demonstrates the number of people who are determined to break the law in the most critical of times”.
“It is disappointing to see charges come in on a daily basis of hard-working police officers, NHS staff and other vital workers, being coughed or spat at, sometimes deliberately exposing them to the risk of infecting them with coronavirus”.
The prosecutions included that of one Yorkshire-based Ashaq Sattar, 40, who knocked on the doors of elderly and vulnerable people in Kirklees, pretending that he was an NHS volunteer and would collect their medicine for a small fee. He pleaded guilty to five counts of fraud and was sentenced to 52 weeks in prison.
