Labour reveals new figures showing overseas fraud gangs 'feasting on Britain'
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Three-quarters of Britain's fastest-growing fraud is committed
exclusively from overseas, according to a previously unpublished
police intelligence report obtained by the Labour Party under the
Freedom of Information Act. In February 2022, the internal memo
from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) determined that
76.6 per cent of Advance Fee Fraud offences reported the
previous year had been perpetrated exclusively from overseas, with
a further 9.3 per...Request free trial
Three-quarters of Britain's fastest-growing fraud is committed exclusively from overseas, according to a previously unpublished police intelligence report obtained by the Labour Party under the Freedom of Information Act. In February 2022, the internal memo from the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) determined that 76.6 per cent of Advance Fee Fraud offences reported the previous year had been perpetrated exclusively from overseas, with a further 9.3 per cent committed by international and UK gangs working in tandem. According to the latest data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales, 409,000 Advance Fee Fraud offences were committed in the year ending June 2023, making up around one in eight of all fraud offences in that period. The NFIB analysis suggests that almost 313,300 of those offences were perpetrated from overseas. Past editions of the Crime Survey show that the scale of Advance Fee Fraud has grown almost sevenfold since the year before the pandemic, when just 60,000 offences were committed, accounting for only one in 62 fraud offences that year. 'Advance fee' scams typically work by persuading an individual to pay a small amount upfront to release a larger sum or delivery that they are told is due to them, often presented as a lottery prize, a bank refund, a tax rebate, an inheritance, or a consignment of goods. Once the individual arranges the fee payment, their bank details can be used to take money from their account or make large online purchases in their name. In the analysis accompanying their Crime Survey report for 2022/23, the ONS said the increase in advance fee fraud "may indicate fraudsters taking advantage of behavioural changes during the coronavirus pandemic…[including] scams where victims transferred funds to fraudsters for postal deliveries." While 'advance fee fraud' is often associated with so-called West African letter scams, where the fraudster asks the recipient to help them get a large sum of money out of countries like Nigeria in return for a share of the fortune, those offences made up only 6.5 per cent of the total identified by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau in 2021. The Bureau's report also showed that 74.9 per cent of fraud related to Computer Hacking and Viruses was also perpetrated exclusively from overseas in 2021. The most common of these scams are 'Computer Software Service Frauds', where the criminal poses as a software engineer working for a company like Microsoft and tells their victim there is a problem with their computer which they can fix for a fee. The NFIB report found that just 314 (two per cent) of the 15,707 Computer Software Service scams reported to Action Fraud in 2021 had no foreign involvement. For fraud involving computer viruses, malware and spyware – and cyber extortion scams, where the victim is told to pay a fee to keep their confidential information secret or to regain control over a hacked computer – the NFIB report found that an incredible 90 per cent of those crimes were perpetrated exclusively from overseas. Research by business consultancy RPC, published in July this year, showed that – while reports to Action Fraud of malware and computer-hacking fell in calendar year 2022 – there was a 39 per cent increase in reports of cyber extortion, from 2,300 in 2021 to 3,200 in 2022. Overall, the NFIB report – titled 'Professional estimation of international fraud offending' – concluded that 77 per cent of fraud reported against consumers and businesses in the UK in 2021 was committed by overseas gangs working alone, or alongside criminals in the UK, while just 23 per cent could be attributed exclusively to domestic fraudsters, including offences which could only be committed by individuals operating in the UK, such as bogus door-to-door salesmen, or people cashing counterfeit cheques. In May, the Home Office's new fraud strategy contained a version of the NFIB estimate which read: "City of London Police estimate that over 70% of fraud experienced by UK victims could have an international component - either offenders in the UK and overseas working together, or fraud being driven solely by a fraudster based outside the UK." The document went on to promise increased cooperation with overseas agencies to tackle fraud, and a global fraud summit to be chaired next year in the UK. Labour's Shadow Attorney General, Emily Thornberry, said: "The parasites behind these international fraud gangs are feasting on Britain, and all the government can offer in response is another global summit. We should be demanding that concrete action is taken now by overseas countries to shut down the gangs targeting Britain, and where we are negotiating trade access to the UK market with those countries, we should ask them to work with us to tackle fraud as part of any deals." "Under the Tories, fraud has become the most commonly-experienced crime in the UK, with thousands of working people and pensioners being robbed of their hard-earned wages and savings every single day. That has to stop. Only Labour will deliver the comprehensive new plan we need to prevent fraud, punish the criminals responsible, and give our communities the protection they need." ENDS Notes for Editors The internal report from the NFIB was obtained by Labour under the Freedom of Information Act after Home Office ministers said it was not their decision to publish it: questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2023-05-03/183674. Below is (i) the summary report provided by the NFIB to the City of London Police (as the national force responsible for fraud), and (ii) an extract from the data on which the report was based, showing the NFIB's analysis of the origin of fraud offences reported in 2021. Given the exclusion of public sector fraud from the report below, this is best understood as an analysis of fraud offences reported by consumers and businesses.
In January 2011, the National Fraud Authority (NFA) estimated that the total amount of money being lost to fraud across every sector of the economy (businesses, consumers, charities and the public sector) stood at £38.4 billion. In June 2023, the UK Fraud Costs Measurement Committee – which took over responsibility for fraud estimates when the NFA was abolished by Theresa May – put the latest figure for UK losses at £219bn, an increase of 470 per cent in twelve years. (https://crowe1.co.uk/s/abd437ed45dcd1e8a4ec3685053a0fc3044c2d98) The huge increase in losses has also been reflected in people's personal experience of scams and hacking. Under the current government, fraud has become Britain’s most commonly-experienced crime, with 3.7 million offences committed in calendar year 2022, compared to 441,174 in 2012. Over that same period, the number of individuals convicted of fraud collapsed from 12,378 to 3,455, and the number jailed halved from 2,629 to 1,177, according to Ministry of Justice data. That means last year in England and Wales, there was only a 1 in 3,000 chance that a fraud offence would result in someone going to prison, and it was 200 times more likely for someone to be a victim of fraud than it was for the perpetrator of that fraud to end up in jail. (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/only-1-in-3-000-chance-of-going-to-prison-for-fraud-qh53xrt5n) According to the latest Crime Survey for England and Wales for the year ending June 2023, the number of reported fraud offences has fallen to 3.35 million, largely due to the success of UK banks in cutting bank and credit account fraud, but the number of Advance Fee Fraud Offences had risen to 409,000 (12.2 per cent, or around one in eight). https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/crimeinenglandandwalesappendixtables In January 2022, the former Counter-Fraud Minister, Lord Agnew, resigned his position in protest at the decision by the government to write off billions lost to Covid fraud during the pandemic, condemning “the combination of arrogance, indolence and ignorance” he had observed from the government, and saying that the Treasury – under Rishi Sunak's leadership – “appears to have no knowledge of, or little interest in, the consequences of fraud to our economy or society”. In response, Rishi Sunak posted a message on social media, saying: "I’m not ignoring it, and I’m definitely not ‘writing it off'. Clearly criminals have sought to exploit our support schemes. We’re going to do everything we can to get that money back and go after those who took advantage of the pandemic.” However, it was revealed earlier this month that just two per cent of calls (103 out of 5,124) referred from the government's Covid Fraud Hotline between October 2020 and June 2023 are still being pursued as active investigations. The figures came from another parliamentary question asked by Labour's Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry: questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2023-11-13/1495 |