Fraud offences rise by a quarter post-pandemic
According to the Office for National Statistics, this was driven by large increases in advance fee fraud and consumer and retail fraud
Fraud and computer misuse offences have increased “substantially” over the last two years, with fraud offences rising by 25% to 4.5 million compared with the year ending March 2020.
According to the Office for National Statistics, this was driven by large increases in advance fee fraud and consumer and retail fraud.
The proportion of fraud incidents that were cyber-related increased to 61%, up from 53% in the year ending March 2020. The ONS said this suggests that much of the increase in fraud offences was because of a rise in cyber-related fraud, and may be related to behavioural changes during the pandemic and increased online activity.
Computer misuse increased by 89% to 1.6 million offences in the two-year period, driven by a large increase in unauthorised access to personal information offences.
Meanwhile, there was a 17% increase in fraud reported to the police compared with the year ending March 2021 and a 25% increase compared with the year ending March 2020.
Action Fraud, the public-facing national fraud and cybercrime reporting centre, reported an 11% decrease in fraud offences (to 354,758 offences) compared with the year ending March 2021, when offences were at record levels (398,022 offences), but the ONS said it is “too early to say whether this indicates a change in trend”.
UK Finance reported a 151% increase in fraud (to 246,285 offences) compared with the year ending March 2021, which was a result of an increase in reporting from its existing members because of engagement from UK Finance, as well as reports coming in from new members who joined towards the end of 2021.
