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The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has revealed that financial losses due to fraud were close to £19m in the 12-month period from November 2023 to the end of October this year.
More than 5,200 reports of fraud were made to PSNI during the period covered, according to the data from Action Fraud.
“Criminals don’t care who they steal from, or consider the cruel impact of their crime.
“Not only is there the financial impact, but losing money to fraud can also be really traumatic and emotionally distressing. For some people, it can be devastating.”
Chair of ScamwiseNI Partnership, Police Service of Northern Ireland Superintendent Joanne Gibson.
Fraud committed at a distance
In the reports made to PSNI over the last year, a diverse range of scams have resulted in losses ranging from hundreds of pounds in ticket scams, to hundreds of thousands of pounds in impersonation and investment scams. Like many frauds, these are committed at distance, with criminals using phones, social media, emails and text messages.
Some examples from the past year include a bank impersonation scam where a person was called by someone claiming to be from their bank telling them there had been suspicious activity on their account, and asking for money to be moved into different accounts to keep it safe. The total amount involved was more than £100,000. An online romance scam resulted in the transfer of more than £50,000 – allegedly to help with a business opportunity.
Another example from the last year resulted in hundreds of thousands of pounds lost in an investment scam where the person believed they were part of a genuine online business opportunity, only to find out it was a scam.
“Scams are presented in so many different ways and, with advances in technology, they can appear genuine and as if they’re legitimate,” Superintendent Gibson. “In terms of the investment scams we’ve seen reported, often these may seem like a good way to boost savings, however, they are often high-risk investments with limited regulation or safeguards.”
Superintendent Gibson continued: “While a variety of approaches are used, some of them extremely sophisticated, the end goal for criminals never changes and that’s to access personal and financial details which are used to commit a more sophisticated scam where the losses can be substantial as we’ve seen from the total losses reported in the last year.
“It’s sickening because people who have placed their trust in someone, or believed an opportunity to be genuine, discover in the most cruel way a criminal has stolen their money.”
Superintendent Gibson says taking a moment to stop and check whenever contact is made, can make a difference.
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