Fraud cases reported to the City of London police rose 9% to 600,000 in the last year, according to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau.
Fraud victims reported 237,494 offences to Action Fraud, the UK’s national fraud reporting centre, Cifas reported 266,701 referrals with 95,489 cases from FFA UK, which represents the UK payments industry.
Cifas chief executive, Simon Dukes, said: “Fraud is an insidious crime – thousands of people fall victim to fraud every day in the UK, and fraudsters use the money they steal to fund further crime. Businesses have been reporting fraud cases to law enforcement through Cifas and sharing fraud data for many years. Publishing this data in crime statistics today is a great step forward.”
“But there is much more to do – industry and government must keep working together to report more fraud and support victims to come forward so that we can understand the true scale of this problem and work together to tackle it.”
However, offences against households reportedly fell 8% in the year to June 2015, which is the lowest figure since 1981.
But some reported figures for violent crime rose including violence with injury, which is up by 54,653 cases and sexual offences recorded by the police are up 41% on the previous year at the highest levels recorded since 2002/3. The figures are thought to be spurred by victim’s greater willingness to report crimes.
Victoria Hartley is contributing editor at Mortgage Solutions, Specialist Lending Solutions, Your Money and Your Mortgage at London-based publishing company AE3 Media.
She has an MA in Radio from Goldsmiths after gaining a 2:1 in a Comparative American Studies BA at Warwick University. She also holds a TEFL qualification and taught overseas in Mexico and Japan from 1994 to 1997.
Her role includes editorial oversight of the news, analysis and features, event content management and strategic and editorial consultancy for the AE3 Media group. She is an experienced video, broadcast and live-event host and regularly chairs web and podcast debates and interviews.
Multiple award nominations have resulted in two wins: Santander Media Awards, trade journalist of the year and Headlinemoney Awards, mortgage journalist of the year (B2B). Here is one of the award-winning pieces: https://www.mortgagesolutions.co.uk/news/2011/07/21/exclusive-tale-bailey-fraud-witness/
Previous roles include editorships of Mortgage Solutions, consumer title What Mortgage and trade title Credit Today as well as a stint freelancing for a variety of outlets including The Guardian and Which? Money.
