UK announces new strategy to tackle scammers

LONDON

The UK on Wednesday launched a new anti-fraud strategy in a bid to better protect the public from scammers.

"Fraud now accounts for over 40% of crime. It costs us nearly £7 billion ($8.7 billion) a year and we know these proceeds are funding organised crime and terror. What’s more, new technologies are making these scams easier to do and harder to police," Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said in a statement.

He said that they will outlaw "SIM farms," technical devices that allow criminals to scam texts to thousands of people at the same time.

“We will work with Ofcom to stop more cases of number ‘spoofing’, where scammers impersonate UK numbers and trick people into thinking they’re speaking to banks, telephone companies or other legitimate businesses,” Sunak said.

The government will also ban “cold calls on all financial products, so that anyone who receives calls trying to sell them products such as crypto currency schemes or insurance will know it’s a scam,” he added.

Sunak said they will launch a new National Fraud Squad led by the National Crime Agency and the City of London Police – backed by 400 new posts.