The police’s Dedicated Card and Payment Crime Unit (DCPCU) has prevented £25m of payment fraud in the first half of 2018.
The police unit, which is sponsored by members of trade body UK Finance, said it disrupted seven organised crime groups and recovered 8,651 stolen card numbers.
In addition, more than £122,000 of compensation was returned to victims following the confiscation of criminal assets.
DCPCU works in the field of card and electronic payment fraud. To date, since its launch in 2002, the unit has prevented £540m in fraud, the police said.
It highlighted the case of an organised criminal group involved with card-not-present (CNP) fraud, in which people's bank card data was used to complete online retail orders, with deliveries specified for a variety of addresses in the Grimsby area.
Surendiran Ganesharjah purchased bank card data via the dark web and recruited a delivery driver called Michael Cummings to assist with the fraud, according to police.
Ganesharjah received a 32-month jail sentence and Cummings received an 18-month jail sentence.
Katy Worobec, managing director of Economic Crime at UK Finance said: "The finance industry continues to take action on all fronts to protect customers from fraud, and supporting the DCPCU provides us with another invaluable weapon in this fight.
"By working together across the industry, government and law enforcement agencies, we can ensure fraudsters are caught and punished. The continued success of the DCPCU is a fantastic example of this kind of collaboration in action."
City of London Police figures out in July showed losses from investment fraud had risen by 70 per cent in the first quarter of this year when compared with the previous year.
The sum taken from investors between April and June 2018, jumped from the £30m reported last year, and amounted to more than double the £24m reported for the same period in 2016.
The news comes in the wake of the Financial Conduct Authority's revelation that pension scam victims were scammed out of £91,000 each on average in the last year.
The FCA and TPR identified cold calling as the most common method used by pension scammers and warned the offer of a 'free pension review' was a common tactic used by fraudsters that many pension holders were unaware of.
The government is in the process of banning cold-calling on pensions but in July it admitted it had failed to meet its initial June deadline - stating the "complexity" of the issue as reason for the delay. It then launched a consultation on the matter.
david.thorpe@ft.com
