Its estimated 40 of all crime in england and wales is fraud. Hello, its the police, open up. Fraud, it is a National Security issue. Its funding other organised crime. | you look back now and you think, how stupid were we . Yeah. But at that moment in time, it was. It was quite terrifying. Every year, fraudsters relieve us of an estimated £5 billion. Last year in kent alone, 12,000 frauds were reported. Panoramas been filming there for almost a year with the kent police fraud squad. The groups that operate tend to be from london. The whole of kent, it is targeted because its a quickjourney for them to come and pick up the cash. Weve also got quite an aged population, again, which is who they look to target, often. So it sort ofjust goes hand in hand with the sort of population type. Police are increasingly worried about something they call courierfraud. It begins with a call from a fraudster pretending to be a Police Officer or bank official, and ends with a Courier Collecting Cash or
it s estimated 40% of all crime in england and wales is fraud. hello, it s the police, open up. fraud, it is a national security issue. - it s funding other organised crime. | you look back now and you think, how stupid were we? yeah. but at that moment in time, it was. ..it was quite terrifying. every year, fraudsters relieve us of an estimated £5 billion. last year in kent alone, 12,000 frauds were reported. panorama s been filming there for almost a year with the kent police fraud squad. the groups that operate tend to be from london. the whole of kent, it is targeted because it s a quickjourney for them to come and pick up the cash. we ve also got quite an aged population, again, which is who they look to target, often. so it sort ofjust goes hand in hand with the sort of population type. police are increasingly worried about something they call courierfraud. it begins with a call from a fraudster pretending to be a police officer or bank official, and ends with a courie
.Panorama. Fraud now represents around 40 per cent of all reported crime in the UK, but very few cases are solved. Panorama follows Kent Police as their.
this is mum s house. lived here since 1976. that s quite nice, actually. certainly happy memories with mum and dad here. yeah. that don t look too good, that one, does it? dad took early retirement and lived life to the full. erm. ..and unfortunately, he died when he was 68. jo and corinne s dad, trevor, was an engineer and amateur racing driver. when he died in 2012, carol didn t have to worry about money. he had a lovely pension to leave mum and, you know, they had a place in new zealand that he sold just before he died and there was a lot of money from that. you know, she was set up. but just a few years after her husband died, carol was targeted by fraudsters, selling her fake investment schemes. one of mum s financial advisers was worried. mum had asked to release more money. and he was slightly worried
about her behaviour. when they looked through their mum s bank statements, jo and corinne were in for a shock. she d ended up on a fraudster s hit list and had become the victim of repeated scams. after reporting losses of more than £140,000, her bank tried to get back some of her money. november 2018. 2,500 recovered from 142,000. oh, that s unbelievable. yeah. sick. we re particularly concerned about investment scams - because often they involve . life changing sums of money. the fraudsters work on the i victim over a period of time. so it s notjust one - investment, and perhaps the victim might even see some return, initially. - but they are drawn into . the scam, so therefore get duped out of huge sums of money. l another fraudster s been taking money from carol for years.