Fewer than one in 300 fraud reports result in someone being charged, MailOnline analysis of police data reveals.
Just 3,600 criminal charges stemmed from more than 1.2million reports of fraud in the year ending March 2024, statistics show.
Demanding tougher action to grapple the epidemic which robs British people and businesses of billions each year, experts have requested ‘less bobbies on the beat and more geeks in the suite’.
Helena Wood, public policy director at Cifas – a fraud prevention service, said how authorities treat fraud needs a ‘fundamental rethink’.
Ms Wood, previously of the National Crime Agency, added: ‘Fraud has never been a priority in policing.
‘But in the last few years, where it’s got to catastrophic levels, we’ve started talking about it as a key issue.’
Government statistics show 312,000 incidents (around a quarter) were reported to Action Fraud – the national police lead on fraud – in the year to March 2024.
The remaining were logged by banks (46 per cent) and Cifas (29 per cent).
These reports are investigated by a customer’s bank or Cifas, which will try to track down the crooks and the stolen cash.
Not all instances of fraud are reported to police, unlike with other crimes, because victims are encouraged to contact their bank as a first port of call. They might end up not telling the police if the banks ends up refunding them.
More than one in six reported crimes in England and Wales is fraud, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
It makes it the third-most common offence, behind theft (27 per cent) and violence (30 per cent).
Despite this, fraud’s charge rate is the lowest of all crimes.
This is compared to an average charge rate, excluding fraud and computer misuse, of 7.9 per cent.
Possession of weapons offences have the highest charge rates at nearly 33 per cent.
Because of how the Government tracks these statistics, some charges will relate to offences that occurred in previous years. Despite this, officials tally up charge rates by comparing the figures from the same year.
Frauds reported to banks have risen eight-fold in five years – from around 69,000 in 2018/19 to 555,000 in 2023/24. This illustrates that victims’ first port of call will be to their bank and not the police.
In the same time, reports to the police and Cifas have only risen by eight per cent and 11 per cent, respectively.
This has fuelled a near doubling in reports of fraud in the last half-decade.
Since computers have become so necessary to participate in modern society, fraud has become much easier and more lucrative to pull off on a mass scale.
This March, the National Crime Agency revealed it had shut down a phone spoofing operation which enabled criminals to steal millions of pounds from victims in more than 100 countries, including an estimated 170,000 Brits.
Ms Wood said: ‘Every single person is a potential victim through their smartphone. ‘Even people at Cifas have become victims.’
And Ms Wood thinks it will only get worse. ‘With generative AI, this is only going to get more sophisticated.
‘We think it’s out of control now, but add the generative AI threat and how that will exacerbate fraud and make scams much more targeted.’
AI systems already exist which can mimic someone in a phone call, or even a video chat, and these can be used by scammers to pass themselves off as someone who could convince you to send money.
A version of this many have fallen victim to is the ‘hi mum’ scam, where con artists, posing as the children of their potential victims, email claiming that they have a new number because they have lost or broken their phone.
The scammer will then gain the victim’s trust before asking for a large sum of money for a sudden emergency, such as overdue rent or a broken car.
Last year, an elderly MailOnline reader revealed how she was almost conned out of £3,500 after being convinced to send her ‘daughter’ the money to pay for a much-needed laptop.
Fortunately in her case, Barclays caught the transaction before it left her account – but not all victims are this lucky.
She said tackling fraud has not been seen as a political priority, paraphrasing the most recent policing review: ‘It doesn’t bang, bleed or shout.’
Ms Wood said that while it is easy to criticise Action Fraud, she said the unit doesn’t have enough resources to investigate fraud so has to ‘farm out’ the investigations to the other forces.
While Action Fraud, which is run by the City of London Police, does send cases to already stretched local forces, it cannot force them them to investigate, and response rates vary wildly across the country.
Ms Wood said: ‘On the flipside, you could put every police officer in the country on fraud and it still wouldn’t be enough.
‘I’m not saying we don’t need more police. We do, but with different skills.’
NCA officers arresting individuals suspected of creating the Russian Coms phone spoofing platform
Russian Coms was used by criminals to spoof phone numbers of trusted institutions such as banks to scam unsuspecting victims of thousands of pounds
Most police officers do not have the necessary skills to combat fraud and Ms Wood said forces need to recruit specialists with skills in ‘data science, data analytics, undercover cyber investigations and deep technical expertise of how to manipulate data’.
The problem, she explained, is that ‘they just don’t have that in policing and probably couldn’t pay for as those skills as they are are short in supply’.
She added: ‘There is a real issue with police retention in financial investigation and obviously the banks pay twice as much.’
The salary of a fraud investigator detective constable would fit within the same pay scales as any other DC.
Excluding location-based weightings, salaries range from around £28,500 for a new recruit to £46,000 with experience, according to the Police Federation.
Ms Wood also said that the way fraud is combated by the authorities needs a complete rethink, with success being measured in a less ‘antiquated’ than just through arrests.
She said a ‘prevention-driven response’ to fraud will be a much more efficient way of protecting potential victims.
Methods can include disrupting international fraud networks, such as taking down online black markets selling stolen data, or targeting local money mules to prevent fraudsters from accessing their stolen cash.
Ms Wood says there should be a specialist police stream for economic crime similar to counter-terrorism and ‘we need to pay people properly… to make it viable’.
City of London Police Temporary Commissioner Pete O’Doherty, said: ‘While prosecutions are important, we are working hard to reduce the threat from fraud by helping the public protect themselves. We also work with government, law enforcement and industry partners to disrupt and tackle fraudsters.
‘City of London Police investigates hundreds of fraud cases at any moment in time, working with and supporting thousands of victims.
‘Our reporting service, Action Fraud, takes reports from victims across England and Wales, linking reports of fraud to offenders and criminal networks, and then passing these cases to police forces to investigate.’
A Home Office spokesperson said: ‘The new government is determined to tackle fraud and better protect the public and businesses from this appalling crime.
‘We are committed to working with law enforcement and industry and our National Fraud Squad of 400 specialist investigators will handle the most complex fraud cases linked to organised crime groups.’
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .