While the UK is heading for the longest recession on record, we do have one enormously growing industry that we could all live without – fraud.
The figures are jaw-dropping. Last year £1.31 billion was lost to fraud, though it’s estimated that the true figure is closer to £4 billion.
The Office for National Statistics has stated that more than one in ten people have been scammed, which means you’re more than five times more likely to be ripped off than burgled. According to Ofcom, the UK’s communication regulator, over eight in ten of us have received a suspicious text message, while nearly half have received a dodgy call.
One reason fraud is so insidious a crime is that scammers exploit stories in the news, our concerns, gaps in technology and plain old confidence tricks, all updated for 2023, to get us to part with our cash. It only takes a moment to catch a person offguard, and the losses can be devastating.
Over the last decade I’ve helped people who have been tricked in to transferring sums between £50,000 and £100,000. In the worst case I saw, a victim lost an extraordinary £350,000 to conveyance fraud. This is when fraudsters hijack emails or target victims during the process of a house sale.
The best way to avoid fraud is by becoming aware of the methods that scammers use to trick people. These range from impersonating your bank to using fake job offers to get hold of your data.
There are some great initiatives…
