The police chief battling cybercriminals from Russia and Ukraine

Half of online fraud comes from abroad, says Ian Dyson, commissioner of the City of London police, who has enlisted the help of Google and Microsoft to fight it

Last Christmas Ian Dyson got a call from his bank. Was he really in a Travelodge, ordering takeaway pizzas? No, was his answer, he was at home with his family. Like millions of others, Dyson had fallen victim to card fraudsters stealing from his account. But Dyson is not like everyone else - he is the commissioner of the City of London police, with the job of protecting not just London but the whole country from fraud. And the depressing reality is, like so many other frauds, the criminals got away with it.

Dyson is disarmingly honest about the explosion in online fraud and cybercrime, and what realistically the police can do about it. "Every month Action Fraud [the national fraud reporting service] receives 40,000 reports, half a million a year, and we know from the ONS stats that's only a small percentage of what is going on. There were 3.8 million frauds and two million cyber offences. You cannot enforce your way out of this. It's physically impossible."