A total of £28,686,091 was lost last year in courier fraud where mostly elderly people were targeted, police have said.
People in their 80s were the most likely victims of the scammers, accounting for 43 percent of all incidents between April 2023 and March 2024, according to data published on Tuesday by Action Fraud, the national fraud reporting arm of the City of London Police.
Courier scamming involves fraudsters cold calling victims’ landlines and pretending to be police or bank officials. The criminals then dupe their targets into handing over money or valuables which are picked up from their home address by couriers.
Victims are often told that their accounts have been compromised or that their help is needed to catch the real criminals. Sometimes, victims will be coerced into going out and buying jewellery or gold on behalf of the criminals.
Oldest Victim 94
The City of London Police, the national policing lead for economic crime, conducted a two-week operation at the start of May 2024 across England and Wales, targeting courier crime and safeguarding victims. The operation resulted in 100 referrals from 26 forces and five arrests.In those two weeks alone, financial losses totalled £290,000 and saw one victim lose £56,000. The majority of offences (70 percent) involved fraudsters pretending to be police and in 22 percent of cases, they pretended to be from the victim’s bank.
Age trends in this period were similar to those reported last year, with mostly the elderly being targeted. Some 85 percent of victims were aged 60 to 90 years old, with 31.5 percent in their 70s and a third in their 80s. The oldest victim was 94.
Ms. O'Keefe said in a statement: “Many elderly people rely on their landline phone to stay connected to the outside world and for peace of mind, we would recommend protecting loved ones from fraudulent calls by getting a call blocking device fitted.
“If you hear that your friend or loved one is being contacted out of the blue by the police or the bank and asked to withdraw money, handover bank cards or make purchases, report it to the police immediately.”
Criminal Number-Spoofing Software
Criminals have been using technology to trick their targets into believing they are legitimate representatives from banks or fraud departments.Tejay Fletcher was the co-founder and administrator of iSpoof, a website which became a “fraud shop” for scammers who defrauded people around the world of £100 million, including £43 million from Britons alone.
The software tools allowed fraudsters to mask their own telephone numbers—known as spoofing—and trick victims into thinking they were being contacted by genuine staff from banks, tax offices, or even fraud departments. The fraudsters would then ask for the victims’ account information or bank card details in order to steal from them.
During the trial, the court heard that one facility in the software allowed fraudsters to intercept one-time passwords, which banks introduced to try and improve security.
Prosecutor John Ojakovoh said another tool tricked victims into entering new card details by claiming the information held by a trusted organisation was out of date, which he described as a “particularly dastardly exploitation of people’s busy lives.”
At one point, iSpoof had 59,000 users.
