Bill Hughes, head of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), admits that the agency’s first year has been “a curate’s egg: good in parts”. The bad parts centred on the difficulty of amalgamating Soca’s constituent agencies and forging productive working relationships with enforcement agencies in other countries. But Hughes dismissed accusations that Soca does not take online crime seriously as “rubbish”.

Yet despite Hughes’ bullish response, there continues to be a gaping hole in policing. England is now the only part of the UK without a dedicated high-tech crime unit, equipped to react to the growing volume of online fraud. Most such frauds may be too small to trouble Soca, with its focus on international gangs, but these crimes still matter.

In the absence of a dedicated unit, English victims must hope that the Metropolitan Police will succeed in its plans to create a national e-crime reporting centre, to better co-ordinate the efforts of local forces.