” Fraud now accounts for over 40% of crime. It costs us nearly £7
billion a year and we know these proceeds are funding organised
crime and terror. What’s more, new technologies are making these
scams easier to do and harder to police.
It’s time to take the fight to the scammers and fraudsters, and
put an end to these crimes which can devastate lives and
livelihoods within seconds.
Today, we’re launching our new plan to tackle fraud.
This is how the new measures will affect you.
We’re going to stop scams reaching people in the first
place
Modern technology has opened up new ways for criminals to bombard
people with a barrage of fake calls, texts, emails and WhatsApp
messages.
Here’s how we’re going to stop it:
- We will outlaw so-called “SIM farms”, technical devices that
allow criminals to scam texts to thousands of people at the same
time
- We will work with Ofcom to stop more cases of number
‘spoofing’, where scammers impersonate UK numbers and trick
people into thinking they’re speaking to banks, telephone
companies or other legitimate businesses
- We will ban cold calls on all financial products, so that
anyone who receives calls trying to sell them products such as
crypto currency schemes or insurance will know it’s a scam
We will bring more fraudsters to justice
Here’s how we’ll make sure the scammers responsible face up to
their crimes:
- By launching a new National Fraud Squad led by the National
Crime Agency and the City of London Police – backed by 400 new
posts
- We’ll step up work with international partners and make
greater use of the UK’s intelligence community to identify and
disrupt more fraudsters overseas
We will empower people to better protect
themselves
We know that often when you fall victim to a scam, people feel
upset, panicked, or embarrassed about being caught out, or
worried about whether they’ll ever get their money back.
Here’s how we’ll help protect you:
- By investing £30 million in a state-of-the-art reporting
centre which will be up and running in the year
- We’re also working with tech companies to make it as simple
as possible to report fraud online. Regardless of which social
media platform you are on, you should be able to find the
‘report’ button within a single click
- Looking at giving banks more time to process payments, to
allow suspicious payments to be investigated and stopping people
from falling victim to fraudsters
Our plan will help protect you and your loved ones from these
scams and the predators who perpetrate them. The time has come to
put the fraudsters out of business. And that’s what I’m
determined to do.”
Prime Minister
