Marketing fraud is big business as criminals net £3.5bn in UK

Published on Monday 10 May 2010 10:04

MILLIONS of Britons are being targeted by organised criminal gangs using the latest mass marketing techniques to defraud them of an estimated £3.5 billion a year.

Police and campaigners yesterday urged victims of scams not to stay silent but to report their experiences as part of an international day of action aimed at raising awareness of fraud.

Scams are becoming more sophisticated and seem more plausible as criminals attempt to keep one step ahead of publicity and law enforcers, according to the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), one of a number of organisations supporting the day of action.

It warns that victims not only pay a high personal and financial price for fraud – but that the scams are also often used to fund other crimes such as drug dealing and people trafficking.

Many people are now aware of the so-called Nigerian 419 scam letter or e-mail, where fraudsters attempt to lure people into paying money up front in the hope of realising a much larger sum later, it said.

But Soca warned that this scam is only the "tip of the iceberg" of a range of frauds, including "boiler room" scams where worthless shares are sold at inflated prices to investors, fake lotteries, counterfeit cheque frauds and fraudsters exploiting online seekers of romance.

Some fraudsters have even pretended to be part of organisations tackling fraud – including Soca – offering to give previous victims "professional" help in recovering their money – in scams known as "fraud recovery" fraud.

Colin Woodcock, a fraud expert with Soca, said: "To anyone who thinks this sort of thing can't touch them, we'd say complacency is a big risk. Many of us look at the sort of frauds that affect other people and feel confident we would never fall for them.

"But serious organised criminals are endlessly inventive and the UK is worth 3.5bn to them every year through mass market fraud – they don't want to give that up.

"Once people get wise to one scam, the criminals will switch to something else."

Bernard Herdan, the chief executive officer of the National Fraud Authority, said: "Fraud is a terrible crime yet often people feel embarrassed when they become a victim and so stay silent.

"We want every victim of fraud to report it to www.action fraud.org.uk – to stand up to fraudsters and help us all work together to make the UK a more hostile environment for fraudsters."

Campaigners said that most mass market frauds originate overseas, but they often use UK addresses to give victims a sense of security.

Large volumes of scam mail are seized in West Africa every year before it can reach its victims, as a result of co-operation between Soca, Ghanaian police and the Nigerian economic and financial crimes commission.

Soca has written to about 200 people across the UK who potentially could have become victims if scam mail addressed to them had not been intercepted in Ghana in recent days.

City of London Police said it had made a number of arrests across England linked to lottery and share frauds and charged nine people in connection with a 20 million boiler room fraud.