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There are more fraud cases in the UK but cyber criminals are taking less according to the latest KPMG Fraud Barometer.
In fact, there weren’t any high-value fraud cases over £50 million last year, rather it was the lower value crimes that increased in both value and prevalence. Fraud cases worth between £100,000 and £5 million rose from 164 in 2020 with a value of £100.3 million, to a total of 285 in 2021 to the value of £178 million.
The number of alleged fraud cases heard in UK Crown Courts in 2021 went up by 66 per cent compared to the same time in 2020 and KPMG’s figures found 298 alleged fraud cases were heard during 2021 (up from 180 in 2020).
Yet the opposite trend was seen in terms of fraud value: the Fraud Barometer figures, which record alleged fraud cases with a value of £100,000 and above, saw the total value of fraud reaching UK Crown Courts in 2021 fall significantly from £724 million in 2020 to £444.7 million in 2021.
KPMG found perpetrators of fraud continued to take advantage of the general public – in 2021, 93 cases of fraud were committed against a member of the public, to the total value of just under £116 million, compared with 39 in 2020 totalling £33.3 million.
Roy Waligora, partner and head of UK investigations at KPMG, said with increased controls, it is only logical that less of these crimes slip through the net.
“In 2020, there was a £200m film piracy case which accounted for 28 per cent of the fraud value reported, hence why there has been such a significant fall in fraud values. With new regulation and heightened awareness of fraud, I hope cases as catastrophic as that one will no longer be seen in the future,” he said.
The data exposed a significant increase in the number of cases heard in UK Crown Courts pertaining to account takeover or payment transfer fraud. The volume of this type of fraud increased by 288 per cent, from eight cases in 2020 to 31 cases in 2021.
The value of this type of fraud also grew from £8.3 million in 2020 to £46.8 million in 2021, a significant rise of 462 per cent. According to the Fraud Barometer data, account takeover or payment transfer fraud was the second most common type of fraud, second only to embezzlement, which had 51 cases heard in UK Crown Courts in 2021 (compared with 42 last year).
The UK healthcare sector has continued to be ravaged by fraud, not only from external criminals, but from individuals working within the sector. The NHS Counter Fraud Authority estimated that the NHS is vulnerable to £1.14 billion worth of fraud each year, a bill inevitably picked up by the taxpayer.
Cases of fraud relating to insider threats became more prevalent in UK Crown Courts last year with a substantial rise in fraud committed by employees (66 cases in 2021 compared with 44 in 2020) and management (66 cases in 2021 compared with 21 in 2020).
“COVID-19 has changed so many aspects of our working lives. As organisations have had to make changes to adapt to economic uncertainty and hybrid working, many employees may feel a mixture of reluctance and anxiety about being forced to perform their job in a certain way to comply with new measures,” Mr Waligora said.
“Economic uncertainty has been a great motivation for some employees to commit fraud. Those working from home may even think that they have a lower chance of being caught because they are out of sight of their employer and are willing to risk it.”