 We've had a problem in the communities for some time, but it seems to be rich in levels higher than we've seen previously. And that is that people have been innocently engaged online. It may be in charity chat rooms, Christian chat rooms, or on online dating sites. It may be romantic interests, but essentially people are establishing positions of trust with people they've never met and they're based overseas. As a consequence of that, there are requests being made of them and the excuse has been given, listen, you know, it's so much cheaper to buy an iPhone or a computer or a laptop or some form of device or clothing in Australia than it is in our country. Would you mind doing me a favour and I'll order it and pay for it and it'll be delivered to your address and then you've thought it to me. Would that be alright? And they trust these people by this stage and they say yes. Consequently, a parcel will arrive and it may contain any form of commercial product. And they forward the goods on to normally an overseas address. Quite often it'll be West Africa, Nigeria or Ghana are the primary destinations. Also sometimes we see it actually may be to another destination in Australia before it even goes overseas. So someone may say, well I'm not going to send it overseas, I would just send it to a friend that I have in Brisbane as opposed to or Melbourne or Sydney. And they say, well I don't see that much as too much of a problem, they say yes. So consequently what they don't know is that the goods that have been delivered to their address have been illegally obtained through the use of compromised credit cards. The merchant has no idea that the order they take online or over the phone has been paid for because it's a recently compromised card that has not been cancelled. The transaction goes through as if it was a normal process and of course it's been delivered to an address in Australia so there's less than any amount of suspicion. The people then on forward it and what they are doing is they will return property mules. Just like you would have a drug mill to courier, drugs through from point A to point B, these people are property mules facilitating the transfer of ill-gotten goods into the hands of criminals. People generally don't understand what they're getting involved with, they don't understand that they're enabling the commission of a crime and we're seeing more of it come through our desks and it's really important that we get the message out there for people not to get involved with this activity. They are enabling the commission of a crime. If they do so knowingly they could be the subject of police enquiries, we want to avoid that. And we don't want the millions of dollars leaving this country every year to go into the pockets of criminals overseas. What do you put this increase down to? Well it's just it comes back to more and more social activity on the internet, more and more take up of the internet of people, that the internet becomes more a part of our everyday lives, it's part of our social fabric now and we've got crooks of course waiting out there just to take advantage of online relationships. No, most of it doesn't get reported to us, it's through the voyage of self-discovery but for example the troops were down the coast just recently and all of a sudden what they thought was one enquiry turned into optimally 30 enquiries and it became a whole network of friends through trusted charity links that were being exploited by these crooks. And you know they've got photographs of the alleged person who we pointed out to them was actually, well I've got a photograph of a US Marine officer that my people showed them that that was just stolen off the internet and the like and we've seen more and often not it's a romance victim or an elderly person, a senior person within the community and that trust has just been abused, exploited and breached. Are these mainly women? Yeah more often than not women but we're also seeing where they've exploited businesses that host virtual offices, storage shed facilities and the property that's been delivered can vary anything from a pair of Birkenstocks to a case of printer cartridges. It's been a variety of norm but sometimes it'll come across the fact that we've identified someone as being a victim of a romance fraud and as a consequence of that we identify other activities that have been involved with or they've been asked to participate in. It's never or it's very, very rarely would it be the credit card fraud. That's the irony is that we go back to the retailer and say listen this computer you sold has been paid for by a compromised credit card we believe and they'll say no, everything's fine, the transaction went through also all year but just wait 30 days until the account holder disputes the transaction and you're going to be able to pocket. So it's quite bizarre that we actually have battles sometimes to try and get the property back and bring a resolution to it. It's all about making the sale first and worry about the aftermath later but we don't want that to be the case we want people to be more on that guard. So who loses out here is it the retailer that ends up out of pocket? The retailer is out of pocket. And what you're saying is that in the process of the sale's gone through but you're trying to catch it before the goods actually travel overseas? That's exactly right and also very often that the sender, the property mule themselves will be out of pocket because they promise compensation for the cost of freight to the overseas destination or sometimes the within Australian destination and of course that doesn't happen. And one more entity that's out of pocket quite often the freight company has been paid for by a compromised credit card but again the criminal is reliant upon the fact that people get their statements 30 days later if they're abouts they may not review it in details straight away at the time and they seem to exploit those opportunities. And when the goods go to West Africa or Nigeria, is there like a big industry there then selling it there? Is that what's happening? Because it sounds like it's huge range of goods. Yeah I mean there's an industry there they can do it to order for the property, they can sell the property or they can use it for themselves. What sort of, how many millions would you estimate is going on this type of business? Look I wouldn't, that would be improper for me to say. This is an Australian wide industry. Oh we'd be talking millions with our question, with our question. I mean just the straight away just one box intercepted there a couple of days ago and there's three four thousand dollars worth of goods. We've had other instances in the past where as an entire crate 40,000 dollars worth of printer cartridges and when the troops turned up at the storage warehouse which was the delivery point on the Gold Coast there was about an equally 40,000 dollars worth of cartridges waiting for transfer. Oh it's where the population is, so the southeast corner at the moment but it would be occurring anywhere in Australia. Yes on occasions yes, but they trust this person they're going to get the money back so all they love this person they don't mind spending it. If you're asked to receive property on behalf of another and send it to another destination don't do it. Get police advice on the situation you're involved with because you may be facilitating the commission of a crime. Yes we have and that was a situation where we had a woman who was involved in a romantic relationship with a male person in Nigeria and she received over 125,000 dollars worth of compromised goods in that instance because the sheer volume every week parcels were turning up to be shipped overseas and there was evidence said that we could show that she actually had insight to what the situation that was occurring and she willingly participated in that process so as a consequence she was charged with fraud. I can't remember I think it might have been a plea in the end but I'd have to check that for you. That's right most people would be horrified to think that they're facilitating international crime and become involved with a process that victimizes Australian businesses. They would be absolutely horrified so you don't want to be involved with such a distasteful exercise and there are crooks out there reweighting and ready and willing to predate upon you. So the idea of trust on the internet has to probably take a little different form of advantage. If I proper a due in the street and ask you to receive property for me and send it overseas you'd say yeah take another pill but the reality is online the trust factor seems to almost the bar doesn't exist sometimes. It's completely unknown either we've had dealings with well the one that network I shouldn't say the network but we identified a group of victims on the Cold Coast just recently in the last couple of weeks and there was over 30 people and that was from one inquiry around 30 people from one inquiry. Some were yes some there were some links there. I'd suggest thousands what we're seeing is the criminals will operate different tactics at different times so when they get someone who's a romance victim they've got them online we know there are thousands of those across Australia they will then use that linkage to then facilitate the acquisition of property. The West African seem to have an unlimited supply of compromised card data from around the world you know there's indications now they've linked up with different aspects of Eastern European organized crime and they're trading in compromised card data and once they've got that data they're just smashing us. More on the senior category very often seniors being over 50. Well anything from Perot Birkenstocks to computers laptops iPads phones high-def cameras it's whatever they want it's pretty much anything to be purchased online. It's very much education and trying to get people to question what they've been asked to participate in. We're looking at approaching some of the freight companies and asking them to actually put in greater risk management processes into this system as an early warning and we're still trying to put together the picture of how we're going to approach this as a from a more strategic level but the reality is it can be prevented through awareness and education and that's why getting this message out through the media and making people think about what they're doing and who they're dealing with will save a lot of this nonsense going on what we're talking about which I think is far better than not talking about it. We don't need to be honest we don't know the full extent of this problem we postulate based on the amount of cash we see going overseas which still is extremely problematic we know that more and more people are getting online on the internet every day we know that we have a society that is not prepared for the vagaries of the internet there's being no broad-based cyber education out there and that are people are put online every day that are ill-prepared for the environment that don't understand the threats and don't understand the consequences of trusting people online that you've never actually met. Sorry does that answer your question? It's a very broad issue it's not a police issue it's a social issue to be fair and it's an it's an issue for industry to actually you know I was talking to someone from industry the other day and I said well what's your fraud losses and they said oh it's virtually nothing I said well what are you talking about they said oh two percentage points and I said right here what's that in dollars for your industry and they said 20 million but they don't have a fraud problem and that's a problem so much fraud now is just does dealt with as a profit and loss exercise and it's an acceptable loss as part of doing business and I from a policing perspective struggle with that because I don't want to see any fraud and to me a fraud is a fraud it's a crime and it needs to be held to account but if we continue to look at it as a part of an expensive part of doing business we're not going to be able to get the information we need to address the real issues. I think that's such a great area have you got enough resources to cope with? Next question. No, is that a no? Are you looking for more in London interest as well? Look what I think we have very much focused on here in Queensland is being proactive and preventing. You are cybercrime is destined to grow the average take up of the internet at this globally in the world is only 34 percent now as the rest of the world migrates we're going to see an increase in the criminal component online and it's going to get worse and we've got to focus on target hardening our environment through prevention and awareness messaging and that's where we've you know we're trying to provide more more education and allowing people to prepare themselves because it can be prevented and the majority of don't get me wrong the internet's a good place you know it's a it's a good tool we're out there every day and I sort of draw the comparison between the internet and the if you like the Pacific Highway it's used by a million people of plus every day millions of people for most people they get from point A to point B without any problems whatsoever but when you go in the Pacific Highway you know that there are risks you know that some people might behave poorly you cannot ever discount 100 percent there's going to be an accident but you're insured against it the difference is though and just like the internet but the difference is that when you go to the Pacific Highway before you're allowed to go on it you've actually you go through an education process a practical testing process and you're prepared for the environment you identify the risks you're insured against it there are there's a regulation framework if someone misbehaves there's a chance they're going to get caught and there are consequences we don't have that in the cyber space and please don't misquote me because there's no way am I advocating that you should have a license to go online that's not what I'm saying what I'm saying is you're prepared for that environment and you know and understand the risks and take measures to deal with it and there are regulatory processes whereas the internet is completely void of those issues so stay on top of this growing problem how many more resources we don't need more resources what we need to more aware of public because we've been appropriately do you need more officers to help track this down and stay on top of it if we can do a put it through strategies that actually prevent people from getting involved on we don't have to reactively respond with investigation and that's where we need to be it's not my position to get involved in resource arguments but we do a damn good job with what we've got oh i'm not here for wish lists come on look you know I can't get into that argument but I've got a team of people that are brilliant and do a fantastic job and face these battles every day but our best ally is an informed public