From fraud to sexual assault, the metaverse could become a hotbed of crime, Europol has warned.

A new Europol Innovation Lab report, Policing in the Metaverse, encourages law enforcement agencies to start considering the ways in which existing crime types could spread to virtual worlds, while they could begin to appear completely new crimes.

“I think it is important for the police to anticipate changes in the reality in which they must provide security and protection,” says Europol’s executive director, Catherine De Bolle.

“The metaverse will spawn new ways to interact and entirely new virtual worlds to live in, potentially transforming our lives, just as the internet has done in recent…