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    Coaxing Cops To Tackle Cybercrime? There's An App For That

    Local police often don't feel equipped to investigate cybercrime. The NYPD is trying to teach patrol officers to ask the right questions about IP addresses, Bitcoin and phone spoofing.
    by Martin Kaste Jan 16, 2020 6 minutes
    Nick Selby and NYPD officer Luis Sayan interview a retired New York City teacher who lost more than $300,000 to online scammers posing as Chinese police.

    Cybercrime is booming, and victims are often at a loss about where to get help.

    In theory, Americans should report the crimes to the FBI, via its Internet Crime Complaint Center. In practice, the feds get hundreds of thousands of complaints a year, and have to focus on the biggest cases.

    But the other option, calling the police, can seem even less promising.

    "They didn't even respond," says Gregg Bennett, whose loss of 100 Bitcoin was described in an earlier NPR story about SIM-swap scams.

    He says he called his city's police department soon after discovering the theft, but concluded it was a dead end.

    "They have no ability to look up something like this," Bennett says. "It certainly is not local — this is not a local issue."

    It's conventional wisdom that cybercrime is too technical and too international for local police to handle. But as daily life becomes more digital, so does everyday crime, and some police say they can no longer avoid wading into the world of phone spoofers, crypto-currencies and

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