African internet scammers target lonely locked-down Brits as romance fraud hits record 7,000 cases in 2020 and detectives call on ministers to crack down on Facebook
Graeme Biggar, head of National Crime Agency s National Economic Crime Centre, said agency is combating surge in fraud during Covid-19 pandemic
He warned social media companies like Facebook would need to be regulated if they did not co-operate in tackling fraud on their platforms
Victims have been defrauded of hundreds of thousands of pounds in some cases
NCA is seeing spike of cases from West African countries including Nigeria; last month, £115,000 was recovered from fraudsters in Ghana