West Mercia Police join national scheme tackling fraud and internet scams
West Mercia Police has joined three other forces in the West Midlands region in a new national scheme aimed at helping to tackle the growing problem of fraud, including internet related scams.
West Mercia Police and Warwickshire Police, along with Staffordshire and West Midlands, have all signed up to Action Fraud, the UK's national fraud reporting centre, which acts as a central point of contact for all information about fraud and financially-motivated internet crime.
Individual police forces will continue to take reports of serious fraud and deal with cases where a crime in action or where the victim is particularly vulnerable.
Nationally, the National Fraud Authority estimates the loss to the UK economy from fraud is £73 billion. In the 2011/12 financial year, 2,715 fraud and forgery offences were recorded in the West Mercia policing area, a rise of seven per cent on the previous year. However, officers believe offences may be hugely under reported.
Detective Inspector Mark Glazzard, who leads the Economic Crime Unit for West Mercia and Warwickshire, said: "We are seeing a growth in all sorts of fraud, from fairly basic, unsophisticated scams such as bogus websites to highly organised criminal gangs targeting vulnerable people.
"However, we believe we only see the tip of the iceberg and a lot of fraud goes unreported - something which we hope may change with the launch of Action Fraud.
"As well as looking for potential investigative leads, Action Fraud will act as a central intelligence unit, pulling together all reports of fraud aimed at identifying and disrupting organised crime teams."
From now, instead of local officers taking crime reports of fraud themselves, they will redirect victims to Action Fraud where staff will take details over the phone or online.
Where a crime has taken place, it will be recorded and the victim given a national crime reference number.
Every day, details of all recorded crimes will be transferred to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB), run by City of London Police. There, all crimes and information reports will be collated and analysed to assess if there are any feasible lines of enquiry. Where there is, these will be sent to the relevant police force for further investigation.
