Reporting scams: who to contact when you get fraudulent phone, post and email
Victims lose money to scammers every day, but you can easily help catch them.
Members of the public reporting their suspicions to Action Fraud have landed a group of investment scammers in jail for tricking victims out of £1.7 million.
It's a heartening example of how taking the time to lodge the complaint to the service has helped put these crooks away and stopped them from doing any further harm.
Here's a rundown of what happened and what you can do to help catch fraudsters.
What was the investment scam?
Five men who were part of an investment scam that tricked more than 70 people into handing over a total of £1.7 million have been jailed for a total of 14 years.
Employees were cold-calling elderly and vulnerable people, using aggressive sales tactics to buy green investments known as ‘carbon credits’.
The crooks were caught after an investigation from the Metropolitan Police into a company called Taylor & Mills Ltd. Action Fraud received a number of reports about the firm back in 2013.
Unrealistic, in many ways
The fraudsters produced professional-looking brochures which contained a quote from former US president Barack Obama about the importance of green energy. These leaflets were sent to anybody who showed an interest in the scam.
During its investigation, the Met discovered that none of the victims’ money was being used to buy carbon credits, but was put straight into bank accounts in the name of Taylor & Mills Ltd.
One victim recorded a 35-minute telephone conversation where one of the criminals said he could return three times the investment made within four months and convinced the victim to invest £50,000. Another victim was tricked into investing £700,000 in the scam.
Alan Mill, Dean Hempstead, Paul Thompson, Daniel Forsyth and Aaron Petrou all pleaded guilty to the charge and were sentenced to a total of 14 years in prison by Southwark Crown Court.
Always report scammers!
As you can see, reporting scams can help to catch the scammers, and that’s where you come in.
You can report fraud, cybercrime, online scams or viruses through Action Fraud’s online reporting tool or by ringing up 0300 123 2040.
If you’ve got a scam email, report it to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) who sent you the email; it can then close the account that sent the email.
If the scam email is mimicking a company, contact the real company. It can verify that the communication is a fake and warn others to look out for it.
Premium phone rate scam victims can contact the Phone-paid Services Authority (PSA), the official regulator for content, goods and services charged to a phone bill. You can call on 0300 30 300 20 or head over to the PSA website.
Or if you’ve received a scam letter, forward it on to the Royal Mail with a covering letter to Freepost, Scam Mail, PO Box, Exeter, EX1 9UN. You can also email scam.mail@royalmail.com or call 03456 113 413.
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Comments
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My email client automatically files suspected spam and junk into a special folder which I cast an eye over daily for anything which has been misfiled, and then delete the lot. In the past 24 hours this folder has accumulated 47 junk messages. I have tried reporting stuff to action fraud but the process is so laborious that I lose the will to live. What would they do if every email user in the UK reported every spam email to them? It would surely break their servers.
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The fact is, little is being done to stop these scams. I've reported numerous scam emails and usually I don't get a reply. Sometimes I get a standard email telling me what to do if my account has been compromised, which confirms that they haven't read my email. Also, I get the impression that Action Fraud is totally useless, does anyone know different? We have to stop saying it's too expensive to pursue abuse of the internet and take action; there is a lot that can be done but it takes time and that costs money.
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Why don't the Police Cyber Crime unit have a single email address where anyone can send suspect emails? This means that a professional can check and collate, and if appropriate, pursue the criminals who flood cyberspace with this stuff. If I was to go through my 'dubious email' file (that contains all suspect emails sent to me,) and then contact each organisation concerned, I would spend the next 48 hours at the keyboard. Not going to happen. I think that the fuzzy, half cocked approach to this whole area of cyber crime shows how reluctant the powers-that-be are to get off their collective fat backsides and actually use our tax pounds productively. But then, that's how our leaders seem to face everything. They don't see it coming, they are surprised when it bites them on their fat backsides, then they flail around with temporary fixes and sticking plasters. Meanwhile the underlying problem continues unabated and nothing effective gets done - and a lot of public money gets wasted on sticking plasters.
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24 March 2017