One in ten a victim of mass E-Mail marketing fraud
Pastor Dale Morgan
One in ten a victim of mass E-Mail marketing fraud*
By John Steele, Crime Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:54pm BST 04/10/2007
One in ten British adults has fallen victim to “mass marketing frauds”
in which they are lured into paying fees on the promise of prizes or
windfalls at a later date, officials claimed today.
More than 3.2 million people have handed over cash after being contacted
by e-mail, letter or telephone in frauds which cost more than £3.5
billion every year, according to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).
Some of the gangs behind the scams - primarily from English-speaking
parts of Nigeria and West Africa - have used their profits as “seed
corn” funding for drug trafficking, it emerged.
Much of the Colombian cocaine in western Europe comes through West Africa.
The UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) also disclosed in the
joint briefing with the OFT that it had found evidence some of the
criminals involved in mass marketing fraud had targeted Gordon Brown’s
flagship tax credit system.
Its investigators have identified thousands of UK bank accounts, created
by the fraudsters in false or stolen identities, many of which have been
used to obtain tax credits fraudulently.
One High Street bank has already returned £750,000 to the Treasury. Soca
has a budget of nearly £500 million a year to target organised crime.
However, at a time when hard drug prices are at an all-time low, it
chose to give its first detailed media briefing since its launch on a
“despicable” area of fraud which plays on “gullible” victims, some of
whom are threatened with violence.
Paul Evans, Soca’s executive director, said it has set its sights on the
organised criminal gangs behind the frauds because it believed it could
bring a “new approach.”
In a month-long investigation in Nigeria, investigators have seized more
than 4,500 fake cheques, postal orders and bank drafts with a face value
of more than £8m.
The fraudsters have realised that potential victims know they should not
send money without “proof” of the longer-term gain.
Authentic-looking fake cheques are therefore printed in Nigeria to send
to send to the victims.
Soca hopes it can have a major effect on the volume of fraud by working
with West African authorities to arrest and disrupt the prolific gangs
involved.
It also believed the fraudsters are vulnerable to action against the
addresses and bank accounts they need in the UK to make the frauds work.
Mass marketing fraud is defined as using “mass communication tools such
as phone, internet or mail to reach large numbers of people cheaply and
easily”.
Common scams centre on an advance fee, whereby prizes or large sums of
money are offered, but in order to access them the victim is asked to
pay a small fee.
Sometimes the victims receive the promised money in the form of a cheque
but discover it is fake after paying the fee.
Mr Evans said: “You may take the view that there is 'one born every
minute’ but in some of the emails we have intercepted there are
appalling examples of quite vicious exploitation, including threats of
violence.”