A new report out today has for the first time revealed the vulnerability of the British public to so called ‘mass-marketed scam mailings’.
The research, carried out by the Office of Fair Trading, found that over 3 million Brits fall victim to mail, text, email and phone scams every single year. With a collective £3.5billion paid out to these unseen fraudsters annually.
However, despite the huge number of individuals affected by this invasive crime, the true extent of its incursion has remained largely unknown until now as fewer than 5% of its victims are thought to report their experience.
Offers of sweepstakes, misleading prize draws, fake psychics, miracle health cures and bogus lotteries were cited by the OFT as the ‘top 5’ scams used by fraudsters to extract money from their unsuspecting victims. They did however acknowledge that this is only the tip of the iceberg.
The OFT report summarises the findings of their ‘Scamnesty’ campaign, run earlier in the year with the help of over 50 of Britain’s Local Authority Trading Standards Services.
As part of the campaign, specifically designed to uncover the magnitude and impact of scam mailings in the UK, Scamnesty bins were placed in local libraries and other public places across the country. Members of the public were then asked to drop details of any scam mailings they received into these bins as evidence.
The OFT announced that over 15,000 scam mailings were collected by the 50 Local Authorities in the three weeks that the campaign ran last February.
OFT Director of Consumer Protection, Mike Haley, commented :
"The huge range of mailings uncovered by the Scamnesty campaign illustrate that there really is a scam for everyone."
"This campaign has provided crucial intelligence, helping us to stop scams bringing misery to millions of people every year."
The OFT plan to repeat the exercise in February 2009 as part of their continuing effort to bring awareness of this relatively unpublicised fraud to the public conscious.
However, in the meantime the OFT advise anyone who receives a potential scam offer to 'Stop, think, and think again'. They also encourage members of the public who are targeted by a scam mailing to talk to family and friends or call Consumer Direct (08454 04 05 06) for advice before responding to any mailing that seems too good to be true.
