Police looking for excuse to drop fraud cases

Inspectorate claims scams that ruin people’s lives are ignored by forces even if perpetrators are identified

SCAMS that can cost victims their life savings are being ignored by detectives because police forces are looking for reasons not to investigate fraud, HM Inspector of Constabulary has said.

Fraud, which the inspectors say is the UK’S most common crime, is given such a low priority by most forces that officers are ditching investigations even when they have “good evidence” including identified suspects.

This is despite the cases being sent to forces by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) and deemed worth investigating because the criminals have stolen more than £100,000 or there is evidence such as names, addresses, bank details and emails.

Matt Parr, HM Inspector of Constabulary, said: “During this inspection, one officer told us that fraud does not ‘bang, bleed or shout’ and, as a result, it is not considered a priority. Nonetheless, people are more likely to be victims of fraud than any other crime

“Despite good evidence, some cases were simply being dropped, with staff believing their function was to reduce demand. This simply cannot be acceptable.”

As an example of forces “seeking reasons not to investigate allegations of fraud”, it cited one constabulary that had filed “no further action” on 96 per cent of cases referred to it by the NFIB. “Some of these cases had a good degree of evidence including identified suspects. Staff performing this role were clear that their function was to ‘reduce demand’,” says the report.

Mr Parr told The Daily Telegraph that he had sympathy with chief constables who were being told to prioritise knife crime and counter-terrorism as well as stalking, harassment and domestic abuse, which pushed fraud to “the back of the queue” often because it was thought people could afford it.

“There is not a single crime that is so widely deprioritised as fraud. Yet, there are people whose lives are absolutely ruined by losing their life savings... by being a repeat victim or through being defrauded by dodgy builders,” he said.

“The fundamental point is: are we happy that we go on not taking fraud seriously or are we going to say we need to have a complete rethink?”

There are an estimated 3.3 million fraud incidents a year, more than a third of all crime. Of those, just 600,000 are reported to the NFIB, which uses computer algorithms to identify 55,000 as solvable. These are then passed to forces to investigate. All frauds in excess of £100,000 are included. Some forces allocated all these fraud reports for investigation, but in others it was as few as 10 per cent despite a “good degree of evidence”.

Some forces had fraud investigation units of just two staff or had capacity to deal with just one investigation at a time, while others had no dedicated fraud team.

It also found there was “ineffectual use of intelligence” such as victim lists which were not being used to identify who needed help but simply to count the number of victims in the force area.