Eight times every minute, someone in the UK reports losing money to a scam. Last year, that added up to more than four million cases – an increase of a million in just two years, as criminals turned to artificial intelligence to mimic voices of friends and even marry their victims.
The total stolen reached almost £1.3bn, according to a report from UK Finance, the banking trade body, which said fraud posed ‘a national security threat’ given the impact on victims and the huge sums taken by organised criminals.
“Nearly 8 fraud cases reported every minute in UK last year, with £1.3bn stolen as criminals use AI and romance scams.”
The scale of the problem is such that tech companies must step up monitoring of their platforms, the report argues. But the true picture may be even worse: experts believe the majority of scams go unreported.
Paul Davis, head of economic crime at Barclays, said: “The impact goes beyond financial loss; it can cause huge emotional harm, leaving victims burdened by guilt and shame, which is why we must tackle the problem at its source to protect consumers.”
Romance scams are a growing frontline. Julie Osgood, 60, told the BBC that the first four men she was matched with when trying a dating site were all potential fraudsters. She spotted the problem before being tricked, but many thousands of others were not so lucky.
Kirsty Guest, a florist from North Yorkshire, was scammed out of £80,000 after meeting a man on a dating app who called himself Patrick. The relationship developed over months, but was based on a lie: Patrick was a scammer using photos of an innocent man. After claiming he had been in an accident on a work trip, he tricked Kirsty into sending thousands of pounds.
“[Fraudsters] are professional and they are making massive volumes of money,” she told the BBC in May. “They’re intelligent in what they’re doing.”
UK Finance said examples included a fraudster marrying a victim to continue stealing money. Criminals have also used AI to mimic the voices of celebrities and even of victims’ own family and friends, enabling them to carry out the crime at greater scale. As a result, people become more susceptible when they are at a vulnerable moment, even if they do not consider themselves vulnerable to being tricked.
The banking trade body’s latest report lays bare the extent of the crisis. With four million cases and counting, the question remains whether tech platforms will act before another million is lost.