Alice Taylor, senior scam and fraud researcher at OXIL Research comments, describes how fraud has evolved into an industrialised, automated global crime, yet remains trivialised, underfunded and misunderstood by many.
We are facing a scam and fraud crisis. It’s time to use the data and analysis the industry has to inform a meaningful mindset change. We’ve moved from traditional fraud to industrialised fraud; it’s heavily automated now and scaled to the extent that it’s almost impossible to fight against. It’s too big and fast-moving for any single organisation – or single victim – to be able to tackle it or defend against it alone. Added to this, AI will only accelerate the speed and scale of the threats posed by online scammers.
I was speaking to someone from the law enforcement community last week, and they said that about 45% of all crime in the UK today comprises scams and fraud. This is the biggest crime type, bigger than murder or theft. And yet, fraud receives less than 1% of law enforcement funding.
Fraud doesn’t bleed. It’s not sexy. It’s got a marketing issue. If you make a TV show about a murder, that’s thrilling. Fraud doesn’t have the same glamour. But there are tragic stories to be told. People take their own lives as a result of being defrauded.
A recent paper by the Police Foundation called The Hidden Health Harms of Scams and Fraud shows that 92% of people victimised by fraud have at least one mental health symptom. There is a proven causal relationship between fraud and suicide. Fraud causes suicide, and I don’t think enough people treating this as seriously as they should. It’s a serious mental health crisis that is, in turn, putting enormous strain on UK healthcare and social care.
Legally, fraud committed against children or adults with care and support needs is financial abuse. We’re trying to change things with our safeguarding approach that has been pioneered globally by OXIL in the last year. My background is as a speech and language therapist, and now I’m the deputy safeguarding lead at Oxil. We believe that safeguarding is the right paradigm to help us reassess and properly tackle the enormous human impact of online scams and fraud.
Our research has looked in detail at scam targeting, not susceptibility. The results threw up some fascinating and myth-busting findings. For example, we found that small business owners were more likely to be targeted than elderly people, who made up a small percentage of our results. Overwhelmingly, working adults are also more likely to be targeted because they have the money and know how to use cryptocurrency wallets.
We also found a correlation between scams targeting teenagers and scams that were gambling themed.
The scams industry today is now more lucrative than the illegal drugs trade. Awareness of the scale of industrialised fraud and scam compounds every year. Challenging the victim-blaming culture and the language we use, like “fell for a scam” is key to understanding how the mindset on tackling online crime needs to be reappraised – and urgently. People have a right to be safe and feel protected and this needs to become the new norm.
As we embrace a new way of thinking about safeguarding, we all need to think outside the box. The safeguarding approach of training staff instead of victims has ruffled feathers in parts of an industry that doesn’t really like change – but that’s also a sign we’re onto something. And our work in this area has only just begun.