Tackle these criminals and focus on keeping so-called ‘suckers’ safe

You don’t have to be simple to be a “sucker”. As our lead story this week shows, fraud can turn good qualities into vectors of attack. Concern for others, patience and openness to strangers, even a conscientious desire to keep your money safe – the scammers remorselessly exploited all of these to steal from John Mundy.

It is a dangerous consolation to imagine that these criminals only prey on fools. We are all their potential victims.

And as Mr Mundy sadly found, once the fraudsters have settled on a victim, the risk they will return is real. The existence of “sucker lists” is not new, but the dark web now allows stolen data to be traded almost instantly.

Once a vulnerable individual has been identified, their details can be exchanged between criminals, as they become one more promising lead for further exploitation.

Across most types of fraud, victims do not suffer a repeat incident; a significant minority, however, will endure a second fraud of some kind within a year, according to the 2017 Crime Survey for England and Wales.

And when broken down by type, repeated targeting is most common among victims of bank and credit card account fraud, where it affects 15pc of people. That is three times higher than for consumer and retail fraud victims.

Banks and government seem to be doing very little to address this problem, either in the way of aggressively seeking out such lists or of proactive education for scam victims. It is to the credit of the Financial Conduct Authority that its website points out that “if you’ve already invested in a scam, fraudsters are likely to target you again or sell your details to other criminals”. But those at risk across all kinds of financial fraud need far more support and education.

Two vital projects are now in the works. The Economic Crime Victim Care Unit (ECVCU), a project involving City of London Police and funded by the Mayor’s office, has had real success on a small scale. In a recent study, it confirmed 18 cases in which the “re-scamming” of victims had been averted. But the first ECVCU pilot began in late 2014. Four years later, the rest of the country is still waiting for it to be rolled out nationwide. Meanwhile, in another London pilot, Age UK is trialling a scheme this year for a national network of local scam advisers. Older people who are being targeted by scammers could then be referred to the service by Action Fraud.

Change is coming, at least in the form of education to warn fraud victims of the risk and teach those most in danger how to stay safe. But all this has been far too slow to keep many victims from losing lifechanging sums.

To complement these measures, we also need a high-profile campaign by law enforcement to pursue those trading so-called “sucker lists”. A coordinated effort to alert and educate those found to be at risk should support that crackdown.

Campaigns aiming to reduce financial fraud must pay due attention to the re-scamming risk. This newspaper has long campaigned for more action from banks to protect scam victims. Here too, they can help.

The finance industry has backed scam prevention education. But it is not enough to hand a book on scams to a victim and send him on his way, as allegedly happened to Mr Mundy. The criminals might write their marks off as “suckers”.

The rest of us must do better.