Five detectives man new Garda cybercrime unit in Galway

Gardaí in Galway are battling to keep up with increasing levels of fraud as the numbers turning to online shopping increase – with fraudsters finding ever more sophisticated methods of conning their victims.

To deal with a surge of crime in this area, a new Cybercrime Unit has been established at the Divisional HQ in Murrough in Galway, where five detectives are working to tackle online fraud.

A meeting of the County Joint Policing Committee (JPC) was told this week that in the first four months of 2021, 136 cases of fraud were reported to Gardaí – over 100 of which were related to online fraud and other technology-related scams.

Tuam-based councillor Karey McHugh Farag told the meeting how she herself had been defrauded as part of a sophisticated text messaging scam.

“Quite recently I was the subject of a cybercrime – I received a text purporting to be from AIB looking for me to login. Normally, a text like that would be a red flag to me, but the shocking thing was that this text message came through on the same thread as all the other messages I got from AIB,” said Cllr McHugh Farag.

Fortunately for her, the bank was able to intercept the fraud because she acted quickly and informed them that she believed she had been conned.

“I got my card cancelled and so on, but what the banking agent told me was to expect a call from an Irish number, from someone with an Irish accent – that has caught so many people out,” she continued.

Chief Superintendent Tom Curley said the people involved in this and other types of fraud were ‘very professional’.
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