Fraudsters fleece more than £14m from Wiltshire residents during pandemic
Almost 5,000 incidents of fraud and cyber crime have been reported across the county
Figures from Action Fraud have revealed how criminals have exploited rising internet purchases and concerns over health during the Coronavirus crisis.
From the start of February 2020 to the end of March 2021, 4,796 incidents were reported - according to data from the UK's fraud and cyber crime authority.
The value of the crimes amounted to £14.5m, the equivalent of around £3,420 every day.
The figures also show online shopping scams were the most common type of fraud and cyber crime, along with advance fee and banking frauds.
WHO IS MOST AT RISK?
In Wiltshire, 852 of the victims were aged between 30 and 39, amounting to 18% of all those who provided their age.
28% of the victims were aged 60 and over, including 38 incidents amongst 90-99 year-olds.
Across Great Britain, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey, 448,700 reports of fraud and cyber crime were made to Action Fraud over the 14-month period.
Victims’ losses totalled £1.9 billion.
And Wiltshire's figure could be higher, with 23,600 reported offences - worth £469.4 million - not recorded to a specific police force area.
'Devious criminals taking advantage of the Coronavirus pandemic'
A spokesperson for Action Fraud said:
"In what has been an incredibly challenging year, we have sadly seen devious criminals taking advantage of the Coronavirus pandemic as a means to commit fraud.
"To carry out their scams, criminals have been honing in on people’s anxieties and the changes that have occurred to our daily lives, such as the fact we have all been shopping online more".
Consumer group Which? said the figures showed online purchase scams were now being running on an "industrial scale". It accused tech giants of not doing enough to protect users.
Adam French, consumer rights expert, said:
"The Coronavirus crisis has meant that more people are shopping online than ever before, while opportunistic scammers have been coming up with increasingly sophisticated tactics to steal people's money.
"Search engines and social media sites have some of the most sophisticated technology in the world, yet they are failing to use it to protect their users from scammers abusing the platforms through fake and fraudulent content".
In response, Google - which runs the most-used search engine worldwide - said it had "strict policies" over advertisements run on its platform. It added that 3.1 billion advertisements, including 123 million for financial services, were blocked and removed last year.
Google also claims to intercept 100 million emails to users each day.
However, the Company said it was seeing an increasing number of fraudsters wreaking havoc by promoting bogus businesses, or running phone-based scams, to lure users away from its platforms to avoid detection.