Counter-fraud

Scots are being warned of a significant rise in scams linked to the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.

As prices and household bills continue to soar, crooks are adapting their tactics to con people out of cash, new figures show.

https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/how-to-avoid-scammers-exploiting-cost-of-living-crisis/

A surge in online scammers and dwindling police resources to combat the threat are causing the highest ever levels of fraud in Scotland, with nearly 50 cases a day.

Overseas criminals are committing so many online crimes that police are now struggling to solve barely one in eight fraud instances, figures show.

https://www.policeprofessional.com/news/police-struggle-to-stop-overseas-scammers-as-fraud-cases-double-to-nearly-50-a-day/

The Government is “flying blind” on its exposure to fraud, which has quadrupled since the start of the Covid pandemic, MPs have said.

The cross-party Public Accounts Committee (PAC) also said that while most of the £21 billion of taxpayers’ money lost to fraud during the pandemic is unlikely to be recovered, the Government should be doing more to recoup what it can.

Technology improvements and globalization have opened up new business opportunities, but they have also paved the way for a variety of fraud schemes that can gravely damage a company’s money, reputation, and growth prospects. Insider trading, data breaches, embezzlement, and cyberattacks are just a few examples of the many different forms and sizes that fraud can take. Strong procedures must be put in place by companies of all sizes to protect themselves from these dangers. We’ll explore in-depth fraud prevention and interest protection measures for businesses in this blog article.

https://www.fluxmagazine.com/how-businesses-avoid-fraud-protect-themselves/

Fraudsters are getting more innovative to take advantage of bilateral 5G agreements on international data roaming.

Losses from global roaming fraud are anticipated to exceed $8 billion (£6.34bn) by 2028, driven by the increase in bilateral roaming agreements for data-intensive use cases over 5G networks.

Investors, no matter how sophisticated, make mistakes. Even presumed experts like financial advisers and wealth managers investing in good faith still lose money.

Sometimes, however, financial managers are negligent, making it easy for fraudsters to take advantage. In other instances, purported financial managers are the scammers themselves, and those who entrust their money to them fall victim.

Lawyers are calling for the UK’s tax authority to expand its whistleblower rewards scheme as new figures show that HMRC paid out over £500,000 to people blowing the whistle on tax fraud.

HMRC has paid out over £509,000 to individuals providing evidence about tax fraud during the course of the last financial year, up from £495,000 the previous year.

In its half year Fraudscape report, Cifas has revealed in the range of external and internal fraud risks faced by organisations. These substantial and growing threats come against a backdrop of additional legal requirements for organisations to put ’reasonable procedures’ in place to prevent fraud.

Between January-June 2023, Cifas members recorded just over 186,500 cases of fraudulent conduct to the National Fraud Database. Particularly notable within these numbers is the scale and growth in attacks on both customers and companies.

In the past year, a third of students said they were victims of some type of fraud or scam.

New research produced by NatWest shows that a third of students have encountered a scam in the past year.

Imagine you are driving your car and the engine light appears on your dashboard. What do you do? Ignore it and hope that it is a fluke and that whatever the issue is will go away, or do you take your auto to your mechanic to find out what the problem is and what the cost will be to repair it? The engine light is a reg flag, a warning sign that something is amiss with the engine. There may be an engine light issue or a serious problem that needs immediate attention. Regardless of which one it is, conventional wisdom tells us to pursue the potential problem with the engine.

A business may have red flags, warning signs to let you know if something is not right in your business. If one is aware of the red flags, you should be able to see if you are a victim of fraud. It is important to note that these red flags do not mean fraud is occurring. It means the red flag should be investigated.