Spot the scammers
Nick Stapleton, who is co-presenter of the BBC’s Scam Interceptors, highlights the most prevalent scams this year – and how to avoid falling victim to them
The frightening truth is that being scammed has now become one of our most universal experiences, with incidents on the rise and a recent report from the Social Market Foundation showing that one in five people globally have been victims of fraud, with 36% of them over 55.
In the UK last year, scams represented more than 40% of all crime – the most common type – with 3.5 million adults losing money to scams and fraud and their average losses coming out at over £4,000. That puts the money leaving our economy to criminals in the region of £17 billion.
But, shockingly, in the UK, we only convict one in every 1,000 fraud cases. It’s an appalling situation but being au fait with the scams of the day will help protect you and your family from becoming a victim – and believe me, no one’s too clever to get caught out.
illustrations PAUL BLOW
The bank impersonation scam
At Scam Interceptors, this is probably the most common scam we deal with and it disproportionately affects older members of the population because scammers usually target those with landlines who are at home during the day, although they sometimes call mobile phones too.