Meanwhile developing nations, where many of the scam operations are based – especially Myanmar, West Africa and South Asia – are being asked to do more, often without the resources to do so.
It is a stark reminder of the imbalance: of criminals exploiting impoverished communities with opportunities to make money that they wouldn’t otherwise have. And for some countries tackling things that are much more elemental to their own population’s existence have to take precedence over worrying about financial crimes in wealthier countries.
What really caught my ear was Xolisile Khanyile, a financial crimes prosecutor from South Africa, outlining this tension. She argued that two-way collaboration was critical: if developing nations are to help destroy fraud networks, wealthier countries need to share their technical expertise and resources too.
She said in her experience, developed nations will complain about a lack of resources without understanding that fighting industrialised fraud needs “fit-for-purpose skills like your forensic accountants, experts on crypto, experts in open source investigations, so that we will be able to make a difference.”
When I spoke to the UK’s Fraud Minister, Lord Hanson of Flint, he told me punishing countries for refusing or failing to cooperate on tackling scams could be counterproductive. Instead, he said, the focus should be on “soft power”.
“What I can do is try to get international cooperation to ensure that we have outcomes which support the making of fraud harder for criminals, make their costs harder, bring them to account, and if we can freeze any assets they’re making from those fraudulent activities.”
There is also the question of whether the authorities and big tech are working closely enough together. “It’s long been my opinion that the big tech companies and social media giants need to be far more involved and at a far more operational level,” says Steve Head, who is now retired but was previously the UK’s first National Coordinator for Economic Crime. In 2014 he helped break up the so-called boiler room scams operating from Spain that tricked British people into investing in non-existent shares.
“It’s these multifaceted international relationships with big business that we really need to be strengthening far more than we have,” he adds.
Digital firms including Amazon and Meta were at the summit, signed the joint statement, and have stepped up their anti-scam protections. Dating platform Match.com has cracked down on fake accounts, and says it now removes 50 every minute.
Head says he learned laying the groundwork for successful action took time before any operational activity took place, and the same applies to cooperating with tech firms. “That’s still about creating and demonstrating that mutual benefit, and it’s about building trust between the partners and mutual respect.”