And according to the latest KPMG Fraud Barometre, it doesn’t look to be slowing down.
The general public was the group scammed most by volume, with 47 cases seen in UK Crown courts in the first half of the year, while fraud cases against financial institutions were the highest by value at £305.2 million in H1 2022, a jump of 4,333 per cent compared with the same period in 2021.
During the first half of 2022, the value of alleged fraud cases exceeding £100,000 heard in UK Crown courts soared by almost 300 per cent compared to the first six months in 2021, rising from £137.4 million to a staggering £532.6 million. This is above the total value of alleged fraud seen in Crown courts during the whole of 2021, which reached almost £445 million, demonstrating that the eruption of fraud sweeping the UK is showing no sign of slowing.
The data also revealed a spike in high-value fraud cases reaching the UK courts in H1 2022 compared to the first six months in 2021. There were seven cases seen valued between £10 million to £50 million and one case over the £50 million mark to the value of £266 million. There were no cases valued over £50 million seen during the same period last year.
Professional criminals were once again the main perpetrators, responsible for 57 cases of fraud worth a total of £378 million. This was down in terms of volume compared to the same period last year (67 cases), but the value went up dramatically by 319 per cent, from £90.2 million to £378 million.
The situation for the general public in terms of fraud is dire and the outlook is even worse. In June this year, UK Finance said that the UK is experiencing an “epidemic of fraud” and the latest Fraud Barometer figures supported this assessment. In the first half of 2022, the general public was the group scammed most by volume with 47 cases reaching the UK Crown courts. Furthermore, the value of fraud allegedly carried out on the general public went up by 74 per cent – from £43.1 million in H1 2021 to £75 million during H1 2022.
For the first six months of 2022, financial institutions had the most fraud cases reach UK Crown courts by value, at a total worth of £305.2 million for nine cases, a vast jump of 4,333 per cent, up from £6.9 million for 13 cases during the first half of 2021. In the context of a changing global banking landscape, where branch networks are shrinking, volumes of digital payments are increasing and payments are being processed in seconds, the data illustrated that fraudsters are creatively finding new ways to steal more from financial institutions and their customers.
Money laundering cases were by far the most significant type of fraud in terms of value at £297.6 million for seven cases in H1 2022, rising 16,781 per cent from £1.8 million for five cases in the first six months of 2021. This was largely due to a single high-value case of £266 million, where money was laundered through a company bank account and the proceeds were used to purchase gold over a period of two years.
Other key findings in the report showed that embezzlement was the most common type of fraud reaching UK Crown courts, with 18 cases in the first half of 2022. But this was down from a total of 26 during the same period in 2021 (although the total value is similar).
Advance fee fraud was also prevalent with cases jumping from two cases in H1 2021 worth £1.2 million to nine cases in H1 2022 worth £11.6 million.
It’s good news for businesses as fraud carried out by employees went down by nearly two-thirds in terms of volume, from 38 to 14, and nearly halved in value from £20.1 million to £10.7 million.
However, fraud carried out by management rose from £23.3 million for 31 cases in the first half of 2021, to £110 million for 34 cases in the first half of this year, an increase of 372 per cent.
