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National Fraud Strategy will speed up complex cases and allow courts to ban corrupt professionals
The government is to tackle Britain's £14bn-a-year fraud industry with a new strategy to reduce the estimated £200-a-head annual cost of scams, swindles and dodgy deals. The launch of the scheme comes as figures reveal phone, internet and mail-order card fraud has doubled over the past four years.
The National Fraud Strategy will introduce a new form of "plea negotiation" to speed up complex cases and ensure more fraudsters plead guilty. Crown courts will be given new powers to order compensation and debar criminal and corrupt professionals such as solicitors and mortgage brokers from practice.
The strategy for England and Wales aims to cut crimes such as identity theft, mortgage scams, Ponzi schemes, credit card rip-offs and selling phoney financial instruments.
New figures today from Apacs, the banks' payment association, show just how much a fresh approach is needed.
Overall plastic card fraud was up 14% to a record £609.9m in 2008, a 43% gain over the past two years.
"Card not present" fraud – where a credit or debit card is used to buy goods by phone, mail order or online – has more than doubled in four years to £328.4m.
There has been a 39% leap in card ID theft and an 18% increase in counterfeiting where the card is skimmed (the magnetic strip copied) or cloned.
Apacs blamed some of the increase on countries that have lower levels of fraud prevention. Many cards stolen in the UK are exported to countries without chip and pin.
The government's fraud strategy will link agencies such as the Association of British Insurers and HM Land Registry with the Serious Fraud Office and the Serious Organised Crime Agency.
The strategy will work on four major fronts:
• Improving knowledge sharing about fraud. The City of London Police will establish a new National Fraud Reporting Centre and National Fraud Intelligence Bureau.
• Tackling the most serious and harmful fraud threats, such as identity theft and mass marketing scams.
• Disrupting and punishing more fraudsters while improving support to their victims, by working with the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) and Victim Support, and introducing plea negotiations and extending crown courts' powers in fraud cases.
• Improving long-term capability to prevent fraud, by better co-ordinating fraud public awareness activity.
The attorney general Baroness Scotland said: "This strategy represents an emphatic response from the government and the wider economy to the misconception that fraud is a victimless crime.
"Fraud costs every person in the country £231 per year. I am very aware of the financial and personal misery frauds can inflict on people and businesses."
"Tackling fraud effectively requires everyone across the economy to work together. We will strengthen the counter-fraud community's response and provide better protection and support to individuals and businesses. It's joint action as well as joined up," said Sandra Quinn, the interim chief executive of the new National Fraud Strategic Authority, which will spearhead the new approach.
"Joined up also means cross-border," she says. "Many frauds which appear to take place outside the UK also have links to this country. Agencies such as Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) and the City of London Police have raided boiler rooms in Germany and Spain.
"They have also attacked US mass marketing scams in North America while Soca is working with west African authorities to disrupt scams originating there."
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