Reporting scam emails to Met Police

[Ian Mason]

On 4 Dec 2011, at 14:15, Peter Tomlinson wrote:

> Is the mere act of sending a phishing or other scam email a criminal  
> offence? If so, we ought to be able to report it through  
> actionfraud, but it appears that they don't want that.

Under English law all attempts at committing criminal offences are  
themselves criminal offences. Collectively with conspiracy to commit  
and incitement to commit, these are known as inchoate offences. It is  
highly likely that a court would regard the sending of an email, with  
intent to commit fraud, as reaching the standard necessary to commit a  
criminal attempt, even if the substantive offence of fraud never  
actually occurs.

Ian