The top 3 types of fraud and what victims can do

There are criminal and civil options available to victims: the criminal system seeks to locate the wrong-doer, prevent them from committing further frauds and punish them for their wrong-doing. The civil system is designed to recover losses.

The following suggestions apply to corporate and individual victims.

Reporting

It is open to victims of fraud to report the matter to the police. This is usually via Action Fraud, a body whose purpose is to collect and collate data relating to frauds and pass that on to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau or the City of London Police.  

However, it is worth remembering that the police are not able to investigate every crime, particularly where the sums involved are relatively small.

Where a victim has been tricked into making a transfer of funds to a fraudster’s account the first port of call should always be the victim’s bank to see if the payment can be stopped or recovered. Even if that is not possible, the CRM code mentioned above may offer a route to recovery, possibly by way of a complaint to Fos.

 Romance fraud is another growing scam where fraudsters prey on the unsuspecting. 

It is also worth a call to the recipient bank (identifiable by the sort or Swift code) to let them know that the account they hold appears to have been used in a fraud and may have received the proceeds of a crime. While this might not assist with recovery of funds, it might stop the use of that account for further fraud, or prevent money being withdrawn from that account.

Finally, where fraud is linked to adverts on social media platforms they should be reported to the host. Again, such reporting is not likely to result in any recovery (a Treasury committee has said that such platforms should pay compensations to victims where frauds are advertised on their sites, but there is no legal requirement at present) but it might help to prevent others falling victim to the same scams, and therefore prevent the fraudsters being further enriched at the expense of future victims.

Investigations and legal action

Where the sums involved necessitate further investigation, the victim has further funds available, or where a victim owes duties to shareholders to investigate, there are numerous steps that can be taken:

• Where there is a suggestion that emails or other communications may have been hacked, an internal IT audit should be undertaken to ensure the fraudster does not have on-going access.