2.3 Million Fraudlent Credit Card transactions per year
During the year, we signed an online petition at the Downing Street website asking:
“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Instruct the UK Police to actively investigate credit card fraud / online auction fraud.”
Details of Petition:
“We request this on behalf of UK businesses who trade online or in a customer not present environment and for members of the public who increasingly are becoming victims of online auction fraud. We respectfully submit that this can be achieved by reversing the home offices decision that these types of frauds are not to be investigated by the police as from the 1st of April 2007.”
Read the Government’s response
Firstly, the Home Office has not given any instruction to Police forces not to investigate credit card or online auction fraud. Decisions on the investigation of any crime have always rested with individual Chief Officers. There have, however, been changes made to the way such crimes are reported and recorded.
Prior to 1 April, where a card holder reported a series of believed fraudulent transactions on their credit card to the Police, the Police would generally record a crime related incident. They would then write to the financial institution concerned, asking for a schedule of usage and confirmation that these incidents were crimes as opposed to mistakes on the account. When the financial institution replied confirming the crimes, the Police would examine the schedule of usage and identify which Police force had responsibility for recording these crimes (based on the location of the offender at the time) and if necessary transfer these crimes to the relevant force for recording purposes. It was then a matter for each Chief Officer to decide whether to mount an investigation into the crimes recorded.
The intention of the new system from 1 April 2007 is to remove a layer of bureaucracy for all concerned and allow the financial institutions to report matters of crime direct to Police forces as soon as they become aware of them through a Single Point of Contact in each force. This benefits the account holder who no longer has to initially deal with both the Police and financial institution (unless the institution refuses to refund the fraudulent transaction in which case the account holder can still go to the Police direct as a victim of crime). It benefits the financial institution as they no longer have to respond to Police requests to confirm a crime where an investigation may not then be possible. It also benefits the Police by early direct contact with the financial institution to identify and bring offenders to justice.
From this year we have also expanded our use of figures supplied by the UK Payments Association (APACS) which shows nearly 2.3 million fraudulent transactions were recorded by the Industry themselves. The Home Office has already acknowledged that APACS data is considered to provide a good source for figures on plastic card fraud and better represent the overall fraud figures than police recorded crime.
There is no bar on the number of crimes that financial institutions can report direct to the Police. The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and APACS are fully supportive of this new system and we will ensure that we continue to liaise with these bodies and others to ensure that the system introduced from 1 April benefits those involved in reporting crime, whilst still targeting criminality.
