Fraud is no longer a peripheral crime affecting a careless few. It is now the most prevalent offence in the UK, eclipsing burglary, violent crime and car theft combined, and costing victims an estimated £10 billion over the past decade. In 2024 alone, 3.3 million cases were confirmed, yet the vast majority never reached an investigation, let alone a courtroom. The figures, drawn from analysis by Times Money and reported by Times UK, paint a bleak picture of a criminal economy that has grown faster than the state’s ability to police it.
Despite its scale, fraud remains largely invisible in official justice outcomes. Fewer than 14 per cent of victims report scams to Action Fraud or the police, according to the National Crime Agency. Of those reports, less than 10 per cent are investigated, and only 8.9 per cent of investigated cases result in any form of justice. The numbers suggest a system overwhelmed not only by volume but by complexity, with crimes increasingly digital, cross-border and industrialised.
The collapse of public confidence in the reporting system has been central to this failure. Action Fraud, the national reporting centre that logged financial scams between 2009 and 2025, was scrapped after an undercover investigation by The Times revealed damning internal practices. Call handlers were found to have misled victims into believing their cases would be investigated, when most reports were simply archived for data. Staff were also recorded privately referring to victims as “morons”, deepening the sense that fraud was treated as an administrative nuisance rather than a serious crime.
In December, the City of London Police launched a replacement service, Report Fraud, promising a radical overhaul. Officials say the new system will use artificial intelligence to spot links between cases and identify patterns that previously went unnoticed. Pete O’Doherty, the City of London police commissioner, said it would leave scammers “nowhere to hide”, while Chief Superintendent Amanda Wolf expressed hope that it could lead to a 10 per cent reduction in scams, even as reported cases initially rise due to better data capture.
Yet scepticism remains widespread. Becky Holmes, an author and prominent commentator on online fraud, warned that any superficial reworking would fail. She argued that police forces simply do not have the funding or trained officers required to match the scale of offending. Fraudsters, she said, understand this imbalance and exploit it relentlessly. “I really hope Report Fraud is the answer,” she said, “but I fear it may fall short.”
Complicating matters further is the government’s announcement of an entirely new National Police Service, described as a “British FBI”. Unveiled by the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, the body would absorb responsibility for fraud and other serious crimes, merging agencies such as the National Crime Agency and freeing local forces to focus on everyday policing. A fraud minister, Lord Hanson of Flint, was appointed last year, signalling political recognition of the crisis. However, how this new force will operate alongside Report Fraud remains unclear, raising concerns about overlap, confusion and delayed impact.
While policing reforms inch forward, banks have been left managing the human fallout. Since October 2024, victims of authorised push payment fraud, where individuals are tricked into transferring money themselves, have been able to reclaim losses of up to £85,000. The cost is split between the sending and receiving financial institutions. In the year to October, 88 per cent of the £173 million lost to such scams was refunded, up sharply from the year before.
These refunds have helped individuals, but they have not dismantled the criminal infrastructure. Losses from authorised push payment scams have fallen since their 2021 peak, but other fraud types have surged. Remote purchase fraud, involving stolen card details used to buy goods, has risen sharply, reinforcing fears that criminals simply adapt to pressure rather than retreat. Ruth Ray of UK Finance said reimbursement alone could never solve the problem, arguing that prevention and accountability for online platforms were more effective than forcing banks to absorb the cost.
Telecommunications companies echo this view. Virgin Media O2 says it blocked more than 600 million scam text messages in less than a year, highlighting both the scale of attempted fraud and the burden placed on private companies to compensate for limited law enforcement capacity. Its director of fraud prevention, Murray Mackenzie, said outdated policing approaches had failed to keep pace with professional, cross-border criminal networks.
Behind the statistics are victims who often blame themselves and remain silent. Lawyers specialising in fraud recovery say shame is one of the biggest barriers to reporting, allowing criminals to operate with impunity. Jonathan Hartley of Richardson Hartley Law warned that artificial intelligence has made scams more convincing than ever, targeting both wealthy individuals and those in financial distress. Confidence, he said, is a liability; those who believe they are immune are often the most vulnerable.
The human cost extends beyond UK borders. Many scams are run from overseas operations where trafficked workers are forced into so-called scam factories, beaten or tortured if they fail to extract enough money from victims in rich countries. Anja Shortland, a professor at King’s College London, said the government could not realistically promise to solve the problem. With offenders beyond UK jurisdiction, she argued that data collection and reporting were the best tools available to disrupt the largest networks.
Fraud’s rise from a marginal offence to the country’s dominant crime represents a profound shift in the nature of criminal harm. As Times UK reporting has shown, the money lost over the past decade alone could have funded policing in England and Wales for months. Whether new reporting systems and a restructured national force can stem the tide remains uncertain. What is clear is that fraud is no longer a niche concern. It is the defining crime of the digital age, and Britain has yet to prove it can fight back.
