Report: Consumers conned out of K10bil

LONDON: Consumers have been conned out of more than £2.3 billion (K10.36 billion) in the space of a year after a “devastating surge” in scams as fraudsters exploited the pandemic.
The consumer body Which? found that last year to April, 413,553 instances of fraud were reported in England, Wales and Northern Ireland – an increase of 33 per cent on the previous 12 months.
Online shopping scams topped the table as criminals took advantage of the fact that locked-down consumers were buying more items via the internet.
These scams – which included people unknowingly buying from fake websites and then finding that the goods never arrive – surged by 65 per cent over the year, with more than 103,000 reports from victims.
The total amount lost to this scam was £69 million (K285.83 million), equating to an average of £674 (K2,794) per reported incident.
Which? analysed data from Action Fraud, the United Kingdom’s national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime, between last April and March.
In previous years, scams reported to Action Fraud have increased in more modest increments: the rise from 2019 to last year was 8 per cent.
Which? said the surge suggested “the scams industry has boomed during the Covid-19 pandemic”. – The Guardian