A total of £503.4m was stolen by criminals through authorised and unauthorised fraud in the first six months of 2018, new data from UK Finance has shown.

During the same period, the finance industry prevented £705.7m of unauthorised fraud, equivalent to £2 in every £3 of attempted unauthorised fraud.

Purchase scams were the most prevalent authorised push payment (APP) scam in the first half of 2018, accounting for almost two thirds of reported APP cases with a total of £19.4m lost.

There was a total of 3,866 reported cases of impersonation scams in the first six months of 2018.

UK Finance managing director of economic crime Katy Worobec stated: “Fraud and scams pose a major threat to our country. The criminals behind it target their victims indiscriminately and the proceeds go on to fund terrorism, people smuggling and drug trafficking, whether or not the individual is refunded. Every part of society must help to stamp out this menace, especially by stopping the data breaches which increasingly are fuelling fraud.

“The finance industry is committed to fighting back, investing millions in security systems and cyber defences to protect customers. We have brought in new standards to ensure scam victims get the help they need from their payments provider; we are supporting law enforcement in disrupting the criminals and freezing stolen money; and we are assisting the government in improving the intelligence sharing to extinguish the threat.”

The full set of authorised and unauthorised fraud and scams data for January to June 2018 is available here

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