Palmer said he believed the number of people who did not report scams were far higher than those who did.
He said people should report incidents as it would help his team’s work – even if money was not retrieved.
He said: “The numbers that are reported at the fraud forum through the police, we were talking about £5m or so of costs a year that people are incurring.
“We need to understand that those are almost certainly underestimates because a lot of this information is not reported.”