TV presenter and comedian Joe Lycett was overwhelmed when he appeared before a House of Lords committee to talk about online fraud. The funnyman, who presents Joe Lycett’s Got Your Back, which has been branded a “sexy Watchdog” was at the Fraud Act 2006 and Digital Fraud Committee on Thursday April 7.
And in the unusual environment for him Joe, who is from Birmingham was first called to speak by Fraud Act 2006 and Digital Fraud Committee by Charles Colville, 5th Viscount Colville of Culross. Committee chair Nicky Morgan said: “I’m going to ask Viscount Colville to come in next.”
Speaking to Joe, the Viscount said: “Thanks for thanks for coming to see us. You’ve talked now online scams, and we’ve heard a lot about how that’s on the increase. Why do you think that they’re so widespread? And do you think part of the problem is that the scamsters aren’t afraid of being prosecuted? Joe if you could maybe answer that.” Joe replied: “Yes, of course. Viscount. I don’t know if I’ve ever met in a Viscount before.”
And the Viscount replied: “That’s very thrilling for I’m so pleased - your first this morning, I’ve actually worked in television most of my life as well hahaha.” Later in the committee Joe was asked why his show is able to track down fraudsters where the police do not.
He said: “Resources I’m guessing. That’s our whole show is to find these people and to confront them. And on that extends as well to the platforms who do have a lot of resource is there’s a lot of money behind them things like Airbnb and pet websites. “We have got pretty close to confronting these people and sometimes have confronted the scammers that are on there. But it’s because that’s what our show does. I’m guessing the police have got a lot of things on their plate.
“But also we get so many messages and we don’t deal with 99% of them, I would say so. We don’t have the resources to deal with a lot of them either. It’s the volume of it is just enormous.” Lord Young said: “Can I go back to something you said right at the beginning, which was about the sucker list? People whose passwords have been stolen, Which are on the dark Web. Would it not be possible for the police, the fraud agencies to get hold of that sucker list if it’s available on the dark web and actually do something to try and protect the people on the sucker list from further scams?”
Joe replied: “Potentially, I suppose. Yeah. I mean that those list I don’t I don’t know exactly. I’m not someone who spends a lot of time on the dark Web. I don’t think exactly where you find them, but I think they’re relatively Once they’ve been procured, they’re relatively easy to find. I think you can. I don’t if you buy them or whether they’re just openly available. But I suppose once that those are identified informing people that their passwords have been compromised would be quite a simple thing to do because you’ve got the email address there. The problem is, if they’re in your email account, I suppose if they clock an email like that coming in, they’ll just delete it. So maybe not a simple, is it? It might sound originally, I don’t know.”
