text: Fewer than one in 20 fraud crimes committed in the UK are ever solved | inews
  Fewer than one in 20 fraud crimes committed in the UK are ever solved
  Victims are losing millions per year as banks won't pay out if personal details are willingly shared
  Tuesday, 25th September 2018, 2:37 pm
  Academy sponsors have been conned into sending hundreds of thousands of pounds into fake accounts (Photo by: Loop Images/UIG via Getty Images)
  Fewer than one in 20 reported fraud crimes are being solved in the UK according to research by consumer watchdog Which.
  Figures obtained from UK police forces through FOI requests also reveal most regional forces have seen a substantial drop in their fraud investigation success rates - with some solving almost 40 per cent fewer cases during 2016 than they did in 2014.
  In the first six months of 2018, Brits were defrauded by £145m – losing a total of almost £1m a day. The figure was 50 per cent greater in the same period of 2017, according to trade body UK Finance.
  Banks logged almost 35,000 cases of push payment fraud in the year to July – a rate of almost 200 a day - with just £31m of the stolen £145m returned to customers.
  Gareth Shaw, an expert at Which? Money, says banks need to do more to protect vulnerable customers, many of whom have no access to branches or one-to-one advice. "Consumers continue to lose life-changing sums of money with few protections as more and more of us are encouraged to do our banking online.
  "The regulator and industry must now seize the opportunity to introduce a reimbursement scheme that delivers for victims of push-payment scams who have lost money through no fault of their own. But ultimately, banks should be doing much more to protect their customers against scams in the first place."