The Fraud Funnel

At Legate, we are seeing increasing evidence of fraud, which forms the key element to acquiring a vehicle dishonestly. Although Asset conversion fraud is more common; this is where either no or minimal repayments are made on the agreement before it is sold on, we are seeing a sharp increase in identity fraud.
So not only do we have the Lender as a victim, but the person whose identity has been stolen as well. The reporting and investigation is compounded by the fact that you have the theft of a vehicle facilitated by fraud on the one hand and an identity theft on the other.There are occasions, as mentioned in another post where police clearly do not have the appetite to investigate the allegation and steer the victim towards Action Fraud; a convenient receptacle for all things deemed to be a bit complicated; apologies for the fraudulent flippancy!

But once embarking on reporting your allegation to Action Fraud, have you given any thought to what action is likely to happen? The word receptacle is there for a reason.

Research undertaken in 2019 to identify what’s likely to happen to your fraud is startling and the term “Fraud Funnel” was coined to describe it.

The figures are eye watering*

Each year about 500,000 victims in the UK contact Action Fraud. These reports are placed into a database where an algorithm selects crime reports with the best chance of success. The outcome list, which was 37,590 when the study took place, is then sent to forces across the UK for investigation.

Conviction rates are poor, in the study year 10,473 cases; just 2% resulted in a criminal justice outcome.

[Source: The Times]

What we do know is that fraud allegations continue to raise and we can be confident to assume that police investigation rates have not improved. Legate are certainly not the panacea for everything, but we can and do support our clients investigating complex cases including fraud ensuring that allegations are dealt with proactively.

Our involvement in the investigative process doesn’t end in reporting; quite often it’s barely the beginning.