NOTHING rockets a crime into the headlines more quickly than when the victim is a well-loved celebrity.
When the latest victim of financial fraud was our own Gloria Hunniford, there was a flurry of interest in the whole topic, especially as she was happy to tell the whole story in the press.
Gloria had £120,000 stolen from her Santander account in a scam which went as follows.
A female imposter who, incidentally, looked nothing like Gloria, came to Santander accompanied by an 18-year-old boy. Handing over a fake driving licence as her ID, she convinced bank staff to add her companion as a signatory on the account, leaving the way clear for the fraudsters to steal the money. (It later transpired that the teller, who was very young, did not know what the real Gloria looked like.)
The young boy, who was presented as Gloria’s grandson, was able to withdraw £1,000, £2,000, £5,000, and £10,000 at a time, until he had withdrawn over £101,000 on day one, and a further £18,000-plus the following day.
Happily, Santander agreed to reimburse Gloria for the full sum.
Nonetheless, it shows that nobody is safe from such criminal activity, and some new data confirms that.
Fraud is now officially the most common crime people are likely to fall victim to, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS).
In fact, the ONS findings show that people are now 20 times more likely to become a victim of fraud than they are of robbery.
Fraud costs the UK public £9bn annually, and is well known to be hugely under-reported.
Those of us coming to retirement are a particularly soft target.
As we know, since the freedom to withdraw large sums from our pensions came in last year, a new generation of pensioners holding money and considering investment opportunities are providing rich pickings for the crooks.
In the most authoritative official estimate of the scale of fraud, ONS figures indicate an estimated 3.8 million cases of fraud and two million computer misuse offences.
This suggests the overall crime rate could be almost double what was previously thought, and confirms that many victims fail to report incidents.
In many cases, victims among the retired or soon-to-be retired are approached by phone or by junk mail through the door, and offered a free ‘pensions review’, after which an offer of some form of investment advice, or early access to their pension, inevitably follows.
The ‘opportunities’ suggested by these ‘advisers’ can result in losing large sums of money due to undisclosed taxes or fees, or in some cases, all the money being lost.
Suggested investments in projects overseas are a particular concern, and if the projects exist at all, fall outside the control of the regulatory bodies in the UK.
One piece of good news is that a new ruling in October dictates that the bosses of dubious companies will face fines of up to £500,000 personally, when their company is caught bombarding people with nuisance calls - even if their efforts have not resulted in financial losses for the targeted victims.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) can also fine the company itself the same amount.
More importantly, it will stop rogue bosses dodging fines by ‘doing a Lazarus’ - closing one business and setting up a new one.
However, despite such increased government scrutiny there’s still no shortage of unlicensed ‘financial advisors’ lurking about.
Thursday just past saw the launch of ‘ScamwiseNI’, a major new awareness campaign to help people get wise to scams, under the slogan ‘If you can spot it, you can stop it’.
To protect yourself, it is essential to take financial advice from a qualified and reputable independent adviser, before making life-altering investment decisions with your pension savings.
We will leave the last word to Gloria Hunniford, who said of her own experience: “There is nothing I could have done to prevent this....You can never be too diligent or too careful about monitoring whatever you have, and wherever you have it.”
:: Michael Kennedy is an independent financial adviser and pensions specialist, and can be contacted on 028 71886005
