The Sunday Telegraph reports that 80 per cent of fraud incidents reported to the police in 2017-18 were rejected.

In total, 237,200 of the 293,900 reports made to the police were sifted out by what officials called the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau’s “brain”, which filters for crimes worth more than £100,000 or those that have investigative leads.

Two per cent of reported frauds have resulted in convictions.

Yvette Cooper, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, said: “This is giving criminals a free ride, even though these crimes can be devastating for people who lose all their savings through fraud.

“It shows how badly overstretched the police are, and also how they are struggling to keep up with the changing pattern of new online crime.”

Police said the algorithm concentrates on “significant” value frauds, cases with leads and those posing the biggest threat.

Detective Chief Superintendent Pete O’Doherty, City of London Police’s head of crime and cybercrime said: “We should investigate more but I believe that for a proportion of crimes, enforcement is not the answer.

“If you find and arrest that offender, is he going to come out of prison, even if he gets to prison, and do it again? The answer is probably yes. Is it better for the public to understand how he committed that crime and remove the opportunity for that offender?”

He added: “The question is how the police upskills itself at the pace at which it is required.”