What is the aim of Stop The Scammers?
OUR STOP The Scammers campaign aims to raise awareness of scams and how to spot them so that our readers can better protect themselves, their friends and their families.
We’ll be promoting the work of organisations who bring the criminals involved to justice as well as those who are there to offer support and advice for victims.
We also want to share the stories of victims in West Yorkshire to help remove
life savings. This is about vulnerable people being targeted; businesses that employ people within our communities and fall foul of a scam then having to close.
It means we will be promoting the free Friends Against Scams training to all our staff and encouraging them to complete the online course.
If you have been directly affected by a scam and want to share your story as part of the campaign, then we’d love to hear from you.
Please email your details and any photos to georgina. morris@jpimedia.co.uk or call 07860 531014.
their family; they’re managing all that stress and strain.
“What we try and educate people and raise awareness around is that impact is a very personal thing. I may be able to stand the loss of £5,000 but for some individuals it could be everything someone’s got.”
The specialist team she leads tackles the most serious economic crime in terms of value and risk, with district level teams also investigating cases.
“We investigate a wide range of fraud, corruption and money laundering,” Ms Senior said. “They may be high risk because of the volume, the value lost or complexity in terms of the nature of the fraud.
“We also provide a lot of advice and support for officers. We’re trying to expand the reach of our expertise within economic crime and look at how we can reach the most people.”
The unit acts as the assessment hub for all crimes referred on for investigation by Action Fraud, the national fraud and cyber crime reporting centre.
Investigators will review cases and seek to bring prosecutions wherever possible, support victims through the process and carry out prevention work in communities.
Ms Senior said: “As well as Action Fraud, we have a large amount of calls to service. There’s a crime in action, the suspect is in the vicinity or someone he’s targeting his vulnerable. It’s where we would have a local police response and actually we would report it to Action Fraud.”
As our lives increasingly move online, it has opened up new opportunities for fraudsters to target people from anywhere in the world.
“The nature of fraud means that we will have potentially a large number of victims that may not reside in West Yorkshire or suspects that don’t reside in West Yorkshire, or a bit of both,” Ms Senior said.
“We have a lot of people in Europe and eastern Europe that target victims through cyber-enabled fraud. If that individual is in Russia, it’s extremely unlikely we’re going to be able to get that money back and make a prosecution.
“The emergence in recent years of cyber crime makes it incredibly difficult at times. I think we have to be honest with people, support them through the crime but also be educating these people and everyone else.
“I think technology is enabling criminals to conduct a larger volume of crime more easily. Phishing emails can be sent to 10,000 or 100,000 recipients. If they get a small take up, their still making an incredible amount of money.”
None of this means that the ‘traditional’ conman who turns up at someone’s door, calls their home or sends a constant barrage of postal scams is a thing of the past though.
Ms Senior said: “In terms of your cold calling, people do still ring victims up. Older people are still vulnerable in that regard.
“We have what we could call our normal business at all times – lots of volume around online shopping, people buying things and paying for things through unregulated means. We also have romance fraud, mandate and invoicing fraud, and investment fraud, particularly around pensions. They’re there all the time.”
Evolving technologies and overseas criminals are not