“By blocking scams at the source, boosting protections for people and bolstering enforcement, we will stop more of these cold-hearted crimes from happening in the first place and make sure justice is done.” Rishi Sunak said: “We will take the fight to these fraudsters, wherever they try to hide. The Prime Minister backed the new fraud strategy, which is set to be announced by Mrs Braverman in the House of Commons on Wednesday. The latest are “Hi mum” text scams, where fraudsters pretend to be distressed children to con cash out of parents.

Most common are push payment scams tricking victims into transferring cash, unauthorised payment card fraud and phishing. The Home Office says 70 per cent of frauds originate abroad or are linked to overseas gangs. That’s why there must be an increased effort to block fraud at source.” Mrs Braverman said: “Our action needs to be bold and firm, but prevention is as important as any cure.

Just 4,913 fraud offences - one in 1,000 - resulted in a charge or summons last year, out of 4.9 million scams reported by people in the Office for National Statistics (ONS) annual survey of crime.įraud is now the most common crime in the UK, with one in 15 people falling victim to it, costing nearly £7 billion a year. Writing in The Telegraph, Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, said: “We must bring more fraudsters to justice.” The Government will also ban technology that allows criminals to bombard hundreds of people every minute with phishing text messages. Spies are to be brought in to track down text scammers, the Home Secretary will announce.Īs part of a crackdown on fraud, the three intelligence agencies will work with new regional squads of police officers to find and stop scammers targeting Britons from abroad.

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