Thousands of fraud victims lost £15.8m in just 13 months
A TOTAL of 6,599 fraud offences were reported in Staffordshire over a 13-month period – with victims losing an estimated £15.8 million.
Reported incidents increased during the first lockdown, rising from 403 in March 2020 to a peak of 607 in June, before tailing off towards the end of the year.
Police believe the lockdown led to more cyber crime as people did more of their shopping online.
Consumer fraud is by far the most common form of the crime reported to the national Action Fraud agency, with 89 per cent of reports between December 2019 and December 2020 coming from individuals rather than organisations.
The issue was discussed at Staffordshire Police’s public performance meeting, with senior officers saying fraud and cyber crime were often “challenging” to deal with, due to their complexity and the fact the culprits can be based overseas.
Deputy Chief Constable Emma Barnett told the meeting that a lot of the force’s anti-fraud work was based around preventing offences through educating the public.
She said: “It’s often hugely complicated. Putting together a case to get a criminal justice outcome is very challenging. What we’ve seen is that level of referral from Action Fraud was increasing just before Covid. We then see a decrease as we start to go into lockdown, then we start to see an increase as we come through lockdown.
“But there is a general sense that more activity online is generating more allegations of fraud.”
“We do have a number of frauds that we will investigate. Because of the campaigns we have in place, people will realise they have been subject to a fraud. And even if we can’t succeed in a criminal justice outcome, we may be able to support someone to get their money back, or some reparation for what they’ve suffered. So for us it is absolutely about that awareness.”
All offences of fraud and cybercrime are reported to Action Fraud, and while some cases are referred back to individual forces, many are tackled at a national level due to their scale or complexity.
The number of offences referred back to Staffordshire Police has been falling since the end of 2018, although there was a spike of cases in April, coinciding with the start of lockdown.
Chief Constable Gareth Morgan told the meeting that the increase in online offending was not limited to fraud offences.
He said: “We’re seeing a shift of criminality to online, and that’s been exacerbated by Covid. A lot of it is to do with the fact that everyone is shopping online much more because they can’t go to the shops.
“We’ve also got real concerns and work very hard with our colleagues at the National Children’s Agency and others about youngsters who are exploited online, because they’re at home, they’re on computers more than we would be normally. So there’s been a pretty concerted effort to maintain that as a space that’s safe for people.”