By Robert Booth
Publication Date: 2026-02-24 07:00:00
It was fraud on a grand scale. The Luton and Romania-based crime gang ‘Fuck the Police’ stole £800,000 in more than 3,000 ATM withdrawals at dozens of locations in 2024.
The complexity of the police investigation matched the crime. When investigators in Bedfordshire seized the suspects’ two dozen smartphones, they found themselves confronted with a mountain of potential digital evidence – 1.4 terabytes of information, according to authorities, linking co-conspirators across eastern England and the Bacau region of Romania.
In addition to human intelligence, forensics and the other cornerstones of traditional police work, detectives are increasingly confronted with vast digital assets that could hold important clues.
The data haul, which included messages, geolocation locations, emails, notes and photos, was equivalent to about 500,000 e-books and would typically take months, if not years, to comb through.
That’s when the Eastern detectives began…
