Online bargain hunters ‘must take responsibility for falling for scams’

People must take personal responsibility to avoid falling for scams, a senior figure at UK Finance has said, as she warned that money lost to fraud was ending up in the hands of criminal gangs.

Karen Baxter, who joined the banking trade body in October from her previous role as an economic crime commander at the City of London Police, said some people were willing to take the risk of being scammed while hunting for bargains online.

In her first interview since leaving the police, she told The Telegraph that money stolen from people who chased a too-good-to-be-true deal without applying due diligence was used to fund “lavish” criminal lifestyles or the activities of organised crime groups.

UK Finance data published last week revealed that a record £479 million was lost to scams last year, with 150,000 people falling victim, a year-on-year increase of 22 per cent.

Criminals have capitalised on the pandemic, leading to a boom in impersonation fraud whereby people are tricked into sending money or giving personal details to fraudsters posing as trusted authorities such as HMRC or Royal Mail.

Ms Baxter said that while some frauds were so sophisticated that it was nearly impossible to tell the difference between authorised communications and those from a criminal, others could be avoided.

“Fraudsters are very sophisticated, they understand what we need and we saw them adapt through Covid,” she said.

“They are very quick to adapt their processes and the sophisticated products that you or I are subjected to, honestly on occasion you could not tell whether it was legitimate or not.

“We [banks] have warnings online and if you have taken those warnings and applied some due diligence, why should you not be reimbursed? I think you should be.”

But, she added: “Some people would willingly take the chance of fraud, just to get a bargain. There are no bargains. There are simply no bargains. I think if you’re not going to apply some due diligence, then I think it’s difficult to justify.

“If you have gone for a ‘bargain’ and you haven’t applied due diligence, we all pay for it. When the money moves into the criminals’ hands, it is used for guns, it’s used for drugs, it’s used for the exploitation of other people. It’s used for a criminal lavish lifestyle.

“So what you’re doing is you’re handing that money over for further perpetuation of serious and organised crime.”