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A team of banks, technology companies and telecoms providers is running a trial to gather information on fraudsters to tackle the most common form of crime in England and Wales.
Cross-industry group Stop Scams UK plans to launch a pilot program next month. It was announced earlier this month after experts and companies warned that the government’s fraud strategy was too weak to deal with the scale of the problem.
The UK trial included around 300 phone numbers and 100 email addresses from four of the UK’s biggest banks managed by Stop Scams members. Challenger banks TSB, Starling and Monzo; Telecom providers BT and Three; and technology companies Meta, Google and Microsoft.
A person involved in the project said, “We aim to engage with the fraudsters in a way that is unknown to them and then use the information obtained to block the tools they use to defraud people.”
The initiative will be particularly useful for users who allow criminals to transfer ill-gotten funds through their accounts, sometimes for a small fee, to divert criminal proceeds through “money mules”.
Mules are caught rather than the fraudsters themselves, and banks have a legal obligation to close their accounts and report them to the authorities.
The project comes as the UK faces a “fraud epidemic”, which cost UK consumers £1.2bn last year, according to financial services trade body UK Finance.
Although the year While the 3.8 million fraud incidents in England and Wales in December 2022 were the same as before Covid-19, according to the Office for National Statistics, it was the most common crime, accounting for 41 per cent. All reported cases.
“For us, fraud is a real scourge in the UK,” said Oliver Prill, chief executive of fintech Tide, warning that many crimes are the work of gangs rather than individuals.
He also said he believes these crimes are “massively underreported.” A study released by the Home Office earlier this month found that less than a third of businesses had reported their most recent fraud case to the police.
Simon Miller, the group’s director of policy and communications, said: “Stop Scams is leading the way in the fight against fraudsters.” “We understand how the fraudsters operate and we pass that knowledge to the right people.”
The government unveiled its long-awaited anti-fraud strategy in early May. According to people with knowledge of the discussions, it has been delayed in part by arguments over proposals to force tech companies to pay compensation to victims of online scams.
These plans were eventually abandoned and replaced by a voluntary “Online Fraud Charter”, which ministers are set to agree with companies this summer.
The fraud tactic has drawn dismay from crime experts and businesses across a range of sectors, with calls for a tougher approach to tech companies and telecoms providers, more police resources and the creation of an authority to tackle fraud.
The government also plans to increase the role of the intelligence community in disrupting international fraud and have more than 400 new police forces and National Crime Agency specialists by 2025.
The Home Office said: “We welcome the initiative being taken by the industry to tackle this crime and identify the disgraceful criminals who seek to cheat the British public out of their hard-earned money.”
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