More than £100,000 has been lost by Derbyshire holidaymakers in the past year because of scams, according to the police. Derbyshire police said a recent report by the City of London Police’s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, revealed how fraudsters stole £11.5 million from unsuspecting holidaymakers and other travellers in 2015 – including 42 cases that […]
Category: Latest Fraud News
How to spot fake travel websites and holiday scams
More and more of us are falling for a range of holiday and travel scams. A new report compiled by the City of London Police’s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau showed scammers stole £11.5 million from unsuspecting travellers in 2015 – up a staggering 425% compared to 2014. Cases spike in the summer months and December, […]
Fraudsters steal £9bn from Britain’s small businesses
Britain’s small businesses are losing more than £9bn a year to fraudsters who send false invoices, viruses posing as bills, or who pose as suppliers on the phone, it has emerged. Of more than 1,000 small-to-medium sized businesses (SMEs) surveyed by invoice network Tungsten, almost half had received a suspicious invoice or been a victim […]
Family loses £3,828 after hackers take over account
Police have warned of a huge increase in holiday and travel fraud and, as if to prove the point, I’ve heard from yet another victim. Grainne McPherson and her extended family paid £3,828 for a stay in a Greek villa that they saw on TripAdvisor.com. “We contacted the person by the email that was provided […]
Email ‘most popular phishing tool’
Cyber-thieves are sticking to email as their preferred way to trick victims into falling for scams, suggests a report. The online crime groups were shunning mobiles and newer technologies in favour of phishing campaigns, said the report from Verizon. The annual analysis catalogues more than 100,000 security incidents that hit thousands of companies in 2015. […]
Muslims warned about Hajj fraudsters
Muslims are being warned about fraudsters trying to con them with bogus travel packages to Saudi Arabia. Hundreds of people from the Muslim community have fallen victim to Hajj scams, with some losing up to £33,000, police say. A ‘significant’ number of people who have paid for tour packages for themselves and their family have […]
Online reviews cast more light than shade
Online reviews have largely superseded brochure descriptions, but they’re all beginning to look the same, says Noel Josephides, chairman of Abta. I spend a lot of time writing hotel and resort descriptions. It’s not a job I enjoy because it’s very repetitive. I run out of adjectives, especially when I am describing views. ‘Spectacular’, ‘panoramic’, […]
Muslims warned about Hajj fraudsters
Muslims warned about Hajj fraudsters trying to con them with bogus travel packages to Saudi Arabia. Hundreds of people from the Muslim community have fallen victim to Hajj scams with some losing up to £33,000. Muslims are being warned about fraudsters trying to con them with bogus travel packages to Saudi Arabia. Hundreds of people […]
Using customer data to fight rising retail fraud
In a world where the threat from cyber criminals seems to be growing, online retailers are in the front line for attacks. The industry, disrupted as heavily as any industry has been by the advent of the internet, is facing twin pressures: making the customer experience as smooth and as easy as possible while protecting […]
Lord Justices dismiss Wyatt Goldtrail appeal
The Court of Appeal has dismissed the appeal of former XL Leisure boss Phil Wyatt and his associates against a £1.4 million liability for the failure of Goldtrail Travel. The appeal court found all 10 of the appellants’ grounds for appeal failed except for a “minor aspect” concerning the compensation for dishonest assistance to former […]
Travel agents targeted in Hajj fraud operation
A string of travel agents in the Birmingham area have been visited this morning (7 April 2016) after being identified as potentially selling unlicensed package tours to Mecca. Officers from the City of London Police, Civil Aviation Authority and Birmingham City Council’s Trading Standards team worked in partnership across the city as part of a […]
Online fraud increases fourfold in 2015
A new report by the City of London Police’s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau has revealed the cost of the 4,910 reported cases was 425% greater than the £2.2 million reported the previous year. The most common type of fraud remained the sale of airlines tickets, with Nigeria, India and Pakistan the destinations most targeted lasy […]
Scamwatch: dodgy holiday websites
Stay one step ahead of the fraudsters with our series of articles giving you the lowdown on the scams they use to trick people out of their hard-earned cash – and how to avoid being taken in by them. This week, the online travel scams that cost British tourists close to £12 million last year. […]
Travel agent accused of defrauding cruise customers
A court has heard how a travel agent specialising in Christian-themed holidays defrauded customers who booked a ‘Bible Lands Cruise’. Bob Fleming, 62, is alleged to have ploughed the money into a Turkish hotel and then encouraged customers to extend their holidays to include a stay at the hotel instead of using booking fees to […]
UK police received 100,000 reports of phishing scams in 2015
Almost 100,000 people in the UK reported that they were the target of phishing scams in 2015, with the majority targeted via email campaigns. So says the City of London Police’s Action Fraud and National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, which has warned that phishing, along with spear-phishing, is being increasingly used to target vulnerable Brits. The […]
Bank fraud leaps by a quarter to £755m
Banking customers are being urged to watch out for a growing army of fraudsters as losses due to fraud leaps by more than a quarter in just one year. Criminals, often working in gangs, are targeting personal and business banking customers remotely to drain current accounts, new evidence suggests. There was worrying growth in the […]
Card fraud soars – this is how you can stay safe
Criminals are getting better at sealing out money, with card fraud soaring by more than a quarter in the past year. Financial fraud losses surged by 26% year-on-year in 2015 amid a growing threat from deception scams and cyber attacks, a report has found. Some £755 million-worth of losses were recorded in 2015 across payment […]
Hotel manager jailed for £350,000 false invoice scam
A hotel manager who stole more than £350,000 from his workplace through a false invoice scam has been jailed. Eamonn Canavan, 47, admitted fraud by abuse of position part way through his trial at Guildford Crown Court in January. He was sentenced to three years and four months in prison at the same court on […]
Phishing scams are becoming a big problem in the UK
Phishing scams are on the rise in the UK, with almost 97,000 people having contacted the police last year reporting that they had been phished in one form or another (and remember – that’s just reported incidents). That figure is from a new report just published by the Action Fraud and the National Fraud Intelligence […]
Social media users warned over rise in online ticket fraud
Online ticket fraud leapt by 55% in 2015 as criminals increasingly made use of social media to rip off music and sports fans, according to new research. More than a fifth of the crimes were instigated via Facebook, with Twitter accounting for a further 6%. The figures come in the wake of warnings that some […]