We await the Labour Government’s strategy to counter fraud, Mark Rowe writes.
Recently I asked someone in the field if I should be on tenterhooks about the strategy, that was due by the end of 2025. It sounded like I shouldn’t. The Government says the right things. Fraud is an increasingly international enterprise, as the Home Office minister responsible Lord Hanson said in March 2025, announcing that a fraud strategy would be published. A possible deadline for publication might be mid-March, when the UK is a financial backer of a global summit, arranged by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime; and the international police body Interpol.
Diplomacy
The UK Government also has the right ideas. The August edition of Professional Security Magazine featured how UK diplomats are playing a part in counter-fraud efforts; by helping to make connections with police in, for example, west Africa and India, to encourage the local authorities to go after call centre-based and other factory-style scammers who are behind largely digital and online frauds faced by UK businesses and consumers. That’s the only practical way to collar Africans and Indians who are defrauding British people (and presumably other nationalities, including their own).
SFO
As for the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), which as the name suggests takes on the most complex financial crime, I was told that it looks to make DPAs (deferred prosecution agreements), given that cases could take ages to bring to court and trials are expensive to hold; as the SFO points out. The disadvantages include that DPAs mean no case law; and what example does it set? And meanwhile, the prisons are full, and the backlog of crown court cases is long.
The SFO recently hailed that it recovered more than £400,000 to be returned to nine fraud victims after an email fraud scheme from the UK between 2001 and 2002, securing over £4.4m. As a further sign of how fraudsters can avoid UK law enforcement, the SFO turned to civil recovery action to reclaim funds for victims, without a criminal court conviction. Nick Ephgrave, the outgoing Director of the SFO, hailed the case as ‘groundbreaking’. He said: “After years of complex international investigation, we’re returning stolen money directly to the people who were defrauded.” However, in that statement lies the uncomfortable truth that cases are difficult to trace – criminals are hardly going to make it easy for the law to go after them – and fraud is the single largest volume crime in the UK; cases are in the millions and the amount taken up by the authorities for investigation – let alone leading to an outcome – is vanishingly small; ‘the tip of the tip of an iceberg’, one policeman admitted to Professional Security Magazine.
Companies House
The fact is that fraud is bad for business. A recently published strategy document is by Companies House, which holds the UK’s registers of companies. The ever-evolving landscape of financial crime and digital deception has brought about significant fraud risks that threaten the operational robustness and reputation of wider government and Companies House, the document admits. In other words, Companies House (in its own words) seeks to ‘be the trusted guardian of corporate transparency, acting as a catalyst for economic growth’. That jeopardised if there’s abuse of the register. However, the strategy document makes plain that such abuse ‘is not considered counter fraud in this context’; the document is only for the ‘insider threat’.
NHS
As for how much money is lost to fraud, who knows? The NHS Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA) estimates that £1.346 billion of NHS funding is vulnerable to loss through fraud, bribery and corruption – equivalent to 0.72 per cent of the NHS budget for 2024-2025. Hence its Project WISE, being trialled with five NHS trusts in the south east and south west of England. The Authority will test how analytical models and machine-learning tools from the CFA’s Project Athena programme can be applied at a local level to identify anomalies and patterns that may indicate fraud.
The former senior policeman Alex Rothwell, is Chief Executive Officer at the NHS Counter Fraud Authority. He described Project WISE as a ‘proactive, collaborative approach to tackling NHS fraud’. He said: “By understanding and quantifying fraud risks, we can see the bigger picture – recognising patterns of behaviour and targeting action where it’s needed most, reducing vulnerabilities and strengthening the resilience of NHS systems.”
And tech
Technology is accelerating the evolution of fraud, making it more sophisticated and harder to detect, the credit checking agency Experian has stated. Imagine, they say, synthetic identities with proof-of-life documents, voice, and video that appear so authentic, they will be indistinguishable from real people. Get ready for a potentially massive spike in identity theft, the firm warns. Among their forecasts; employers will unknowingly onboard people who aren’t who they say they are, giving bad actors access to sensitive systems.
Job opportunity
Because fraudsters are quicksilver, and savvy, and wise to any opportunity – such as scamming charitable people who seek to give money after a tragedy or disaster; or preying on people who want a job. The insurance industry’s not for profit body the Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) reports that fraudsters advertise courier roles on social media and classified ad websites. Applicants are told their application has been successful and are then asked for personal details – including their name, address, date of birth, car insurance information and a copy of their driving licence – supposedly to set them up as delivery drivers.
Fraudsters may use this data to take out policies in the applicant’s name and resell them as doctored policies, by posing as fake insurance brokers in a fraud known as ‘ghost broking’. Here people who struggle to find affordable cover, such as the young, are tricked into buying fake car insurance online.
The fraudsters may also hijack genuine insurance policies to stage fraudulent claims in a scam known as ‘crash for cash’, which involves causing deliberate collisions for compensation. A type of this activity known as moped scams – which has been rising across London and Home Counties – is often driven by identity theft.
In such cases, the fraudster will use details stolen from the job seeker to fraudulently admit liability in their name, while the fraudster or an accomplice of theirs acts as the injured party. Doctored images and documents are then used to support the claim, often exaggerating damage, injuries and costs to inflate the payout.
Nicola Smith, Intelligence and Investigations Manager at the IFB, stresses the value of personal information and protection of it. She said: “Victims are misled into believing they’ve secured a job and are encouraged to hand over copies of their insurance certificate, driving licence and other sensitive documents. The consequences are serious – fraudsters may take out multiple insurance policies in victims’ names, third parties can pursue them for costs, and their credit scores can be badly damaged. Young people may also be more vulnerable to this scam, as fraudsters exploit their need for work and they may be less aware of how important it is to protect their personal information.”
