Bank scam cases double in a year
Conmen trick 84,000 savers into handing over £350m
THE number of fraud victims tricked into handing over lifechanging sums to sophisticated criminals has doubled in a year.
Britain is facing an ‘authorised’ fraud epidemic where customers are conned into transferring huge amounts of money out of their accounts.
Just this week a Mail investigation revealed how crooks working from an office in India pose as tax officials to target up to 10,000 Britons a day. Victims are told they have an outstanding tax bill and face arrest if they don’t pay up.
In other cases fraudsters pose as legitimate companies or organisations such as the victim’s bank, telecoms provider, solicitor – or even the police.
Banks recorded 84,624 cases of socalled authorised push payment fraud last year, almost double the number reported in 2017, according to figures from banking trade body UK Finance. In total victims lost £354.3million – a 50 per cent increase compared to 2017.
Consumer groups described the soaring numbers as ‘alarming’ and warned the country’s grip on fraud is ‘spiralling out of control’. They said the true number of victims and losses were likely to be even higher as many people are too ashamed to come forward.
For years banks have refused to refund customers when they fall victim to this type of fraud, claiming the victim ‘authorised the transaction’. Of the £354.3million stolen by fraudsters last year, just £83million was repaid to victims, according to the UK Finance figures.
Around a quarter of the total losses – some £92.7million – was a result of impersonation fraud, where crooks pose as people victims trust such as their bank.
Often the crooks claim their targets are a victim of fraud and must transfer their savings into a supposed ‘safe account’. In reality, the account belongs to criminals and as soon as the money has been transferred victims almost never see it again.
Another common scam – known as a ‘malicious payee’ – involves fraudsters posing as online sellers who trick shoppers into paying for fake goods.
This might be a second-hand car that never arrives or a holiday villa that does not exist. There were 52,621 reports of this type of fraud last year, with victims losing £46.4million.
In other cases victims have been conned into moving money into a fake investment promising high returns. Or they may have been persuaded to make payments to someone they met through a dating website – known as romance scams.
Martyn James from Resolver, the complaints website, said: ‘The sheer scale of the fraud figures suggests the activity of scammers is spiralling out of control. As soon as one scam gets shut down, another will take its place, so the businesses that hold our private details need to adapt, invest in tighter security and never become complacent.’
In a victory for Money Mail’s Stop the Bank Scammers campaign, victims of authorised fraud are to be refunded from May 28 – even if the bank is not at fault. Major banks have also agreed to sign up to a code of conduct that sets out what steps they must take to protect customers.
Altogether, fraudsters stole £1.2billion last year, according to UK Finance. On top of the £345million lost to authorised fraud, a further £845million was lost to unauthorised fraud – where criminals, for instance, spend your money by stealing your card or using bank details to shop online.