Suella Braverman says 'We need to hold more scammers accountable' Photo: Andrew Wong/Conservative Campaign Headquarters
The Home Secretary will announce that spies must be brought in to track text scammers.
Three intelligence agencies will work as part of the fight against fraud. with new regional police squads to find and stop rogues targeting Britons from overseas.
The government will also ban technology that allows criminals to bombard hundreds of people every minute with phishing text messages.
Suella Braverman, the home secretary, wrote in The Telegraph: «We need to hold more scammers accountable.»
Last year, just 4,913 cases of fraud — one in 1,000 — resulted in charges or subpoenas. , of the 4.9 million cases of fraud reported in the annual Office for National Statistics (ONS) Crime Survey.
Fraud is now the UK's most common crime, with one in 15 victims, costing nearly £7bn a year.
Ms Braverman said: «Our actions must be bold and hard, but prevention is as important as any treatment. That's why there is a need to intensify efforts to block fraud at its source.”
The Home Office reports that 70% of fraud originates abroad or is linked to foreign gangs.
The most common are forced payment scams that force victims to transfer cash, unauthorized payment card scams, and phishing.
The latest of these is the “Hi Mom” text message scam, where scammers pretend to be kids in distress to swindle money from their parents.
The most common scams
The Prime Minister backed a new fraud strategy to be announced by Ms Braverman in the House of Commons on Wednesday.
Rishi Sunak said: “We will fight these fraudsters wherever they try to hide.
«By blocking fraud at the source, strengthening people's protection and strengthening law enforcement, we will prevent new heartless crimes and ensure justice in the first place.»
GCHQ is already running. with banks to fight fraud and cyberattacks, but will now be given an expanded role alongside MI6 and MI5 to spearhead an effort to «detect and stop» fraudsters abroad.
They will work with a new police force, the National Fraud Squad (NFS), which will overhaul fraud investigation methods with a proactive, intelligence-based approach supported by 400 new specialist investigators, the government said.
In her article, Ms. Braverman said the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), which brings together experts including GCHQ, has already stopped 120,000 scams, but she said ministers would go even further by «naming and denouncing» websites, on where the most fraud occurred. /p>
Wrong tech companies and social media platforms that fail to prevent fraud on their sites will be fined up to 10% of their global turnover under the Internet Safety Bill currently being considered by the House of Lords .
Action Fraud &# 39;not fit for purpose'
Action Fraud, the police reporting center, will be overhauled after MPs branded it as «off-label». It will be replaced by a simpler website for reporting fraud, a larger call center with 30% more staff, and an online portal for victims to get updates on the progress of their cases. You can even change its name.
As part of a £30 million government injection to modernize Action Fraud, a new artificial intelligence computer system is being created that will act as a 'super brain' to analyze and 'connect the dots' in all fraud cases in the UK and identify criminals. behind it. It is expected to be launched next year.
All cases of fraud will be reported to the updated Action Fraud system, which will help determine if it is so large and serious that the investigation should be led by the National Crime Agency. , new strengthened regional police teams or local forces.
Fraud has also been ranked alongside serious and organized crime as a national threat, requiring the police to devote more resources to investigations.
In 2021, only 1,753 officers and employees were involved in economic crime — 0.8% of the total number of police officers, although fraud accounts for 41% of all crimes.
Banks will be able to delay processing payments for more than the current business day plus 24 hours to allow investigation of suspicious payments.
Cold calls on financial products such as fictitious ones will be banned from insurance schemes or cryptocurrencies, as well as «sim farms» — devices that can be loaded with hundreds of SIM cards to send thousands of fraudulent messages at the same time.
The government will also consider using mass text messaging services in an attempt to stop the technology from helping criminals.
MP Anthony Brown, a former chief executive of the British Banking Association and a member of the Treasury Select Committee, has been named the new anti-fraud advocate.
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Mr. Brown said: «The technology sector, telephone companies and Financial Services Companies must take responsibility for protecting their users by preventing fraud in the first place and work together to develop it.
» We can use the technology the scammers are using against them to stop them in their tracks and I will work with the industry to make sure that happens.”
How to avoid being scammed
Helena Wood, co-leader of the UK Economic Crime Program at the Royal United Services Institute, said the additional staff, while welcome, would still not lift current fraud resources beyond the current one percent of the total police force.
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She said the government should not have backed away from imposing a tax on tech and social media companies given the «huge role» they played in facilitating fraud.
Yvette Cooper, Shadow Home Secretary affairs, said: “This plan is too small, too late and does not correspond to the scale of the problem.
«All the Minister of the Interior has done is rename the existing national teams and re-announce the Action Fraud replacement from almost two years ago.»
Rocio Concha , Who? director of policy and advocacy, said: «The fight against fraud has progressed too slowly in recent years, and in particular more action is needed to ensure that major technology platforms take strong action against fraud.»
» The Government should ensure that the Internet Safety Bill effectively protects consumers from the flood of online fraud that is infiltrating the world's largest search engines and social networking sites.
“It's great to see that the Government has finally come up with a strategy that recognizes the collaborative approach to share data between industry and law enforcement that is needed to combat the UK's fraud epidemic, which is having such devastating financial and emotional impact on lives. victims.
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