Half of fraud cases dropped without suspect identified

Home Office figures show surge in abandoned cases as number of charges fell by 11 per cent in single year

NEARLY half of fraud cases investigated by police are dropped without a suspect being identified, as fewer of the crimes are being solved, figures show.

The Home Office data reveals just 4,853 investigations completed by police last year resulted in a suspect being charged, a fall of 11 per cent on the previous year’s 5,431.

This represents just 9 per cent of the 51,870 fraud cases passed to police forces by Action Fraud, the central police reporting centre for all such crimes. The figures show that in nearly half the cases – 22,420 – no suspect was identified. This represents a 20 per cent increase on the previous year’s total.

The disclosures come only a month after HM Inspectorate of police warned fraud victims were being denied justice after they found just 1 per cent of officers are being assigned to investigate the crime even though it is now the most common reported offence.

The figures have been uncovered by the Liberal Democrats who will today accuse Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, of being “asleep at the wheel” in the fight against fraud.

The figures only cover those cases that are referred to police forces by Action Fraud, which uses an algorithm to filter out those deemed unlikely to be solved because of a lack of evidence.

Many people do not report fraud because of perceived shame of revealing how they were conned or because they do not believe they will be solved.

The Lib Dems will today propose banks with the worst records on fraud should be named and shamed.

They are also demanding a law to make it mandatory for banks to refund blameless victims and a legal requirement on social media companies to do more to clamp down on scams.

Alistair Carmichael, former Scottish Secretary in David Cameron’s coalition Government, said: “It is a national scandal that vulnerable people are being abandoned after losing life-changing sums of money.”

Internet banking fraud more than doubled between 2019 and 2020.

Those falling victim to scams are also often not receiving their money back, with just £147 million (47 per cent) of the £312 million of losses to bank transfer fraud being reimbursed last year.

Last month, HM Inspectorate of police said forces were wrongly dismissing fraud as a low priority, victimless crime with too few officers and too few investigations allocated to it.

The Lib Dems are also demanding minimum standards for all banks on preventing fraud, requiring them to report to the Government.

In its Beating Crime Plan, the Government pledged to replace Action Fraud with an improved national fraud and cybercrime reporting system and increase intelligence capabilities in the National Crime Agency (NCA) to identify the most harmful criminals and organised criminal gangs.

The NCA is to be given new responsibilities to investigate fraud as part of the Conservatives’ manifesto pledge to create a new cybercrime force.