UK Card Crime Unit continues Europol cross-border collaboration

UK Finance has declared that its ‘Dedicated Card and Payment Crime Unit’ (DCPCU) will continue to cooperate with Europol, the European Union’s police intelligence network, regardless of any Brexit outcomes.    

The DCPCU is a specialist police unit which tackles criminal activities related to card, cheque and payment fraud. The unit is formed under a collaborative partnership between UK Finance, City of London and Metropolitan Police forces, with its team reporting directly to the Home Office.

Throughout 2020, the DCPCU has participated in Europol’s cross-market ‘Card Action 2020’ collaboration, alongside law enforcements from Italy and Hungary.

During the past three months, the DCPCU revealed that its Europol collaboration had cross-referenced over 90,000 pieces of card data, preventing approximately €40 million in transactions being carried by criminal gangs.

Europol had established its Card Action collaboration to help European police units prevent the growing cybercrime of e-skimming credit transactions which primarily target merchant point of sales.

As highlighted by member state police forces in the ‘IOCTA 2020’, ‘card-not-present fraud’ had been marked as a criminal threat in constant evolution, which requires cross-border cooperation to prevent criminal transactions.

Detective Chief Inspector of the Dedicated Card and Payment Crime Unit (DCPCU) Gary Robinson said: The unit’s work with Europol has been instrumental in helping to disrupt the criminals responsible for selling and purchasing compromised card details on dark websites, preventing €40 million in losses.

“Acting as a gateway, the unit facilitated the sharing of data with the card schemes involved to stop the criminals behind these callous activities and protect the public from card payment fraud.”