Banks must help fund police war on the fraudsters
WITH BRANCHES CLOSING, CRIME CHIEF CALLS FOR HELP TO PROTECT VULNERABLE
APOLICE boss is calling on the banks to pay for a dedicated officer in North Wales to combat the rising tide of fraud at a time when they are closing branches across the region.
Either that or they should help fund extra staff at the region’s Victim Help Centre which provides vital support to people who have been swindled out of their money by cruel fraudsters, he says.
North Wales Police and Crime Commissioner Arfon Jones says the banks have a duty to do more to help when bank customers very often now have to travel long distances for face-to-face meetings because their local branches have been axed.
Mr Jones was speaking during a visit to the help centre in St Asaph, which is dealing with a record number of calls from victims of all sorts of crime.
Last year the centre in St Asaph dealt with 34,000 cases, more than any other centre in Wales.
The problem of fraud was highlighted recently by the case of an elderly man in his 70s who was devastated after being tricked out of nearly £300,000 of his life savings.
In this instance ce the scammers persuaded aded the victim over a series of calls he was at risk of los- ing his life savings s because a dishonest bank employee was stealing from his bank account.
The only way of f safeguarding his money, they said, aid, was to temporarily rarily transfer his savings ngs into another “safe account” which was anything but. It is an all too familiar story to Sioned Jacobson, the operations manager at the centre. She said: “The workload is definitely increasing. “We get between around 80 and 120 cases a day directly from the police, and then on top of that there are referrals. referr “A lot o of the cases we’ve been getting recently are o ones where someone has been hacking into their compu puter, and they’ve as asked to put their password and bank details in, and then the offender has got their bank details and has taken quite a bit of money from them.”
According to Police and Crime Commissioner Arfon Jones, the centre provided an excellent service.
He said: “In terms of volume this is the best performing centre in the whole of Wales and I am very proud we are providing a gold service to the people of North Wales.
“The key factor is the vulnerability of the victim, irrespective of what the crime is.
“I would like to do more around the vulnerable victims of fraud crimes.
“Vulnerable people, very often elderly, are being targeted specifically and that is despicable.”
Mr Jones added: “Under the circumstances, the banks could and should be doing more to help the victims of crime. It’s the least they can do.”