Laura Eshelby on the NCA’s Strategic Threat Assessment

The NCA recently published their latest Strategic Threat Assessment (STA) and Graeme Biggar, their Director General, confirmed that serious and organised crime (SOC) remains a high harm threat, more so than any other national security threat.

Biggar shared his expert view that the key to tackling SOC threats is to really understand them, and the STA helps practitioners to do just this.

Headlines of STA for Fraud?

So, what are the key takeaways from the 2023 STA. Crime figures for England and Wales (E&W) are down overall, but the harm of serious and organised crime remains high.

When considering the drivers for this, Biggar explains that organised crime is increasingly international (City of London Police recently suggested 70% of fraud now has an international element), criminals are more networked and joined up, and they are technologically adept.

To build on the drivers, it is clear that the societal shift to being online plays a part in the continued prevalence of fraud. So much of our lives from work, banking to social lives is managed online.

In terms of volume the STA identifies that fraud volumes are down overall in comparison to 2022, and for fraud the NCA credits the increased implementation of industry counter measures for this decline. Fraud, which the NCA consider through the lens of against individuals and against businesses, remains the most reported crime type in E&W, despite the noted decline.

• 11% of fraud victims were victimised more than once in year ending 2023
• 3.1 million fraud incidents reported during 2023
• 37% of all crime in England and Wales is fraud related

What do the figures tell us?

For England and Wales, there continues to be a high prevalence of fraud, but overall reporting levels are down. For Action Fraud this is marginal when compared to 2022 (1%), the same with UK Finance (1%), but for CIFAS (9%), and the crime survey overall (16%) the decrease is more marked. The interesting thing now will be to monitor this and see if and how this downward trend continues into 2024.

Fraud remains the most reported crime (an estimated 37% of all crime). There are no similar estimates for fraud against business.

Under reporting remains an issue

According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales, only 13% of frauds against individuals are reported to Action Fraud. This leaves 87% unreported and the reasons given by the NCA to explain this are due to the nature of fraud; individuals may be emotionally impacted and for businesses they may be reticent to come forward for fear of reputational impact.

How can we incentivise and encourage victims both communities to come forward? To do so will help them seek a remedy so deserved and help those working to tackle fraud to understand the methods being used, to inform improved counter measures and solutions to mitigate harm the caused.

An increased reporting of Cyber-enabled fraud

The STA reveals that most (89%) frauds reported to Action Fraud are now cyber-enabled, compared with 37% in 2012-2013. Technology increasingly is deployed by businesses to fight back against potential attacks, however, as we know criminals will always be looking to see how these very counter measures can be flipped to adverse effect also. The NCA recognise this and highlight the increased use of social engineering to circumvent controls, with data breaches remaining a key enabler of fraud. They go on to explain how through harvesting personal and financial information, criminals can commit frauds affecting individuals and across sectors.

Moving the money

The STA also shines the light on the use of money mules to facilitate the laundering of criminal proceeds. This can include the use of recruiting members of the public to allow their accounts to be used for criminal purpose. Economic downturn and financial pressures may provide the unfortunate tipping point for individuals to be persuaded to do this. Historically students have fallen victim to this not realising the full impact of the part they have played to further crime.

Emerging technology to commit fraud

Fraudsters are harnessing emerging technology including AI tools, with tools like generative AI making fraud easier to perpetrate and at pace for offenders. The NCA draw out specific examples of how criminals will adopt AI to improve their fraud efforts, explaining, “It will almost certainly be adopted by more criminals over time to increase the scale and sophistication of frauds. For example, to improve the linguistic complexity of email attacks, and using deepfakes and voice cloning to improve the chances of deceiving a victim into believing they are speaking with a colleague, friend, or family.”

Conclusions

Although fraud reporting is down compared to the previous year, it may be too soon to consider this in a positive light, given the upward trend for the past few years, and the fact that fraud remains the most prevalent crime type reported in England and Wales.

The NCA STA also indicates that criminals are continuing the use societal changes (increasing online world, economic downturn) as hooks to target individuals either as victims or as mules to help transfer criminal proceeds arising from fraud. Finally technological advancements remain critical in the fight back by industry and individuals alike. The more we can collectively do to encourage reporting by all victims, the more we can do to enhance counter measures to mitigate the harm caused.

A final thought from me: The NCA are clear in their report that AI will help the ease at which criminals will successfully defraud us, whatever sector we operate in. The time is now to come together and develop the solutions that will enhance our response and protect where possible our vital assets and resources.

What you can do if you are a victim of fraud

• If you are a victim to fraud, report it to Action Fraud in England, Wales or Northern Ireland. For Scotland report to Police Scotland by calling 101.
• If you have received a suspicious email, forward it to report@phishing.gov.uk to help stop criminal activity and prevent others from falling victim to scams.
• Always report suspicious text messages and scam call numbers to 7726. Your provider can find out where the text or call came from and block or ban the sender.
• If you see a suspicious advert report it to the Advertising Standards Authority.

Contact Clue to arrange a personal consultation with Laura, and learn how our intelligence and investigation software supports the detection and prevention of fraud and other economic crime types.