While lower levels of fraudulent conduct must be seen as positive, it should not distract from the concerning increases that were seen in some areas. Most notably, the unremitting rise of identity fraud continued, hitting a high of 174,523 cases in 2017. In 95% of these cases it involved the impersonation of an innocent victim. Another worrying trend was that, despite the decreases in misuse of facility fraud overall, misuse of bank accounts increased (up 13%), with many of these cases involving young people using their bank accounts to launder criminal funds, essentially becoming ‘money mules’.

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