Action Fraud

This is a message sent via The Neighbourhood & Home Watch Network (England & Wales). This information has been sent on behalf of Action Fraud (National Fraud Intelligence Bureau)

Cold calls, on line, suspect emails. Here in South Terrace we are not immune. To help, read what steps you can take - as advised by the national agency.

Action Fraud (Action Fraud, Administrator, National)

We are the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and financially motivated cyber crime and are run by the City of London Police, working alongside the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau. Our specialist team uses information from all of the fraud and cyber crime cases reported to us to create alerts about new types of crime or those which are increasing in severity.

Further to the message you received on the 19th December from the Neighbourhood Alerts team, we are delighted to now be working together with this network because it means that we can share our prevention alerts with you from now on. Don’t worry – we will send only a reasonable amount of these alerts to you, and only when we think that they may be relevant, in the hope that you will be able to prevent yourself from becoming a victim of this type of crime.  

Issues that we commonly see, and that we will be informing you about specifically over the coming weeks and months include the following:

• People who call to tell you that there is a problem with your bank card and that they need to collect it from you to fix the problem;
• Fraud committed by people selling event / entertainment tickets, weight-loss / teeth whitening drugs, or vehicles online;
• Fraud committed by people who cold-call thousands of people in the UK in order to sell them an investment in shares or precious metals, or who want them to invest their pension;
• People pretending to be someone they are not in order to persuade your business to send money to a new bank account to pay for an invoice;
• The activities of cyber-criminals who want to infect your computer or smartphone in order to steal your banking details or “lock” important files to prevent you from using or viewing them;
• Fraudsters who persuade people to pay a fee in advance of receiving a loan, which never appears. 

All of these can be avoided by following the simple prevention advice we will include in every alert we send you, which you will also be able to find on the Action Fraud website

We hope that you find our alerts interesting and that they can help you to keep the criminals at arm’s length.

You will also continue to receive messages as normal from the agencies who already communicate with you.

Thanks for your attention,

The Action Fraud team

If you believe you have been a victim of fraud or cybercrime, please report it to Action Fraud by calling 0300 123 2040, or visiting www.actionfraud.police.uk.