The Scams Epidemic: A Martin Lewis Podcast Special

I'm Martin Lewis and welcome to this special edition of the Martin Lewis podcast on Britain's scam epidemic. In this pod,

I talk in depth to a victim of a deep fake investment scam which manipulated my face to con him out of money. We'll be looking at the anatomy of a scam. Going through step by step the destructive psychology of entrapment that pulls people in and grabs their money off them.

We also want to show you how to protect yourself from scams, so there's lots of tips and advice on what you can do to make sure you're not a victim of the scammers, because these scammers are pervasive and persuasive and you have to be very careful. Plus, the top 10 fastest growing scams in the UK at the moment.

And finally, why is this happening? Why does it feel like Britain is the world leader in scams? I'll be putting questions to the head of fraud at Santander. I'll be asking the group director for online safety at the regulator Ofcom why it's going to take until 2026 before scam adverts are regulated. And finally, scams are a crime. So, I've got the police on. We want to know why so few people arrested?

Lot to get through. I think we should play the theme tune.

It's very nice to meet you, too. This is a bit of a funny one for me to sort of interview you because it's quite a funny one for me. Yeah, it's sort of my fault, isn't it? Oh, you got that information, did you? Yeah. Oh, I was going to try and play the funny with that one.

So, I find this devastating. This is Des Healy, who was scammed out of a huge amount of money. You lost five grand in savings and you owe loads of £70,000. And that was after clicking on... It was the deep fake AI of me and Elon Musk, wasn't it? It was, unfortunately, yes.

I have this weird accolade of being the most scammed face in Britain. I've spent my entire career trying to help consumers and these criminal, these thieves, these organised crime people have perverted my reputation and it's quite difficult for me to have to sit in the room with you knowing that probably because you trusted what I was doing that you put the money in was it? It's not your fault though, is it, at the end of the day?

It's your name, but it's not your fault. And I have witnessed you a few times on TV stating that you never put your name to those things. So why on that particular day, it sold it to me because you come over on it. I do not know Martin. I really don't. And when you look at it again, a really funny thing, when you look at the advertisement, again, if you really study it, the mouth, the talking isn't 100%. On DeepFakes, my wife is a tech journalist. And on DeepFakes, it's the mouth. It's the mouth is always the giveaway.

Yeah. That and I've never met Elon Musk.

So look, I'm, first of all, let's be really plain about this. Falling for scams does not make you a mug. Makes you a victim, but it doesn't make you a mug. I know of lawyers and solicitors and accountants, highly professional trained people who have heard have fallen for scams. The people doing this are psychologically adept at manipulating us, use huge

online and intellectual resources in order to steal our money which is why i think you are brave and admirable for coming on the show dares and i want to thank you for talking through your story as a warning flag for everybody else of how easy it is and this is about i suspect in the way most of these you get drawn in didn't you

Yeah, do you know what? Over the time period, because it was last August, someone once said to me about the spell that was cast upon me. And I think that was the best terminology. But I've said, I think it was probably the best. You would be wished. So yeah, because you sit there and you go over and over and over, why you allowed this to happen and how it actually happened. And you can't come to any conclusion.

If I was to say, after all this was done, Martin, and I owed 76, I've never seen 76,000 miles in my life or just an ordinary kitchen fit. You know, that's all I do for a living. So let's go back to the beginning. So you saw this advert with me in on social media, Facebook, was it?

On Facebook, yeah, one of the most common, very, very little verification. People who know I sued Facebook a number of years ago for 3 million to set up Citizens Advice Scam Action for defamation and much so much misuse of my face. It was meant to get better. I don't believe it's got better. It's not just Facebook, though. So you saw this. Yes.

Then what happens? Did they call you? You leave your details if you're interested. A lady called me within 10 minutes. And you thought this was a sort of a Bitcoin type investment, did you? Was it a Bitcoin trader? Yeah, I don't. I mean, I know the word Bitcoin, but I don't understand what cryptocurrency is or anything like that. But that's what they were using. That's what they said.

I, all I know is that if you wanted to make a cut of 100 quid in a short period of time, which was right up my straight, it was August, I'm self-employed, Christmas was around the corner and work wasn't great at the time. So, you know, it was an opportunity just to earn a few extra Bob. And what they did, what generally the phrase used with me is Bitcoin or Bitcoin trader and just to make a statement out there for everyone.

just as they use Elon Musk is sort of a totem if you like for being really, really rich. I am a totem for being trustworthy so you can trust as a place to put your money and Bitcoin is a totem for making money really quickly. These scams are nothing to do with Bitcoin. You're not putting your money in anything that people stealing your money. They use Bitcoin

In the same, I mean, there's lots of arguments over cryptocurrency, good or bad. This isn't about cryptocurrency. This is just a scam. So I just want people to get clear. This is just a scam. That's what it's about. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. So you've done it. You've put your details in. The first thing she asks is, have you ever done any trade-in, of any sort? Of course I haven't. So I said no. I briefly explained that any idiot can do this as advertised. So here I am, kind of thing.

You were being charming, weren't you? I was being honest. Are you being excite? Yeah. I can hear the warm tone coming from you. Yeah, I mean, it was just always a trusting person. Yeah, I always play a straight game always. I never used to when I was a kid and I think that was the difference. I just turned it all around in adulthood. But yeah, I thought I was onto a good thing, to be honest with you. As one of the banks pointed out to me during this period, you know, you really thought you was going to earn a lot of money. So come on, let's not mess about here.

if it had gone the other way, you would have been pleased, which I found a little bit of a kick in the teeth, to be honest with you, because that was never the idea. Yeah, this isn't an investment. I don't like that attitude from them. This isn't an investment. You were scammed. I mean, people are allowed to invest money, but this wasn't... You weren't investing in anything. This was just thieves. Yes. And we should just as much as if they bashed your door down and took your stuff. This was psychological theft. A very good one as well, because I started to think this guy was some friend of mine.

Yeah. How stupid is that? That's what they're trying to do. He knew about Man United. I'm a Man United fan. Was he based in the UK? I'm a man city, but we will let you off for that. Was the door. What was we saying? Was he based in the UK? Well, he said... Was his accent...

Yeah, he was Eastern European. Okay. He said he come from Czechoslovakia, very, very clear English, but you could hear that, you know, that kind of, I thought, Russian background. He said he was in Switzerland. He also said that he travelled all around the world, he spent a lot of time in America cutting his teeth from the banking game. He's been into financial advice, and he's been into all sorts.

He's done it for between 19 to 20 years now. He's got three children, two boys, one girl. They're not going to inherit, by the way, he's made 23.4 million doing this. So why are they and I didn't think, I did ask him the phone to you. And he said, well, because the bonuses that we get from this company are astronomical, and he said, I spent a lot of time building this up.

He said, I'm coming towards the end now, and I want to get my bonus, which to me, oh, fair enough, I took that on board, our fault. So everything they had the ultimate answer for, that, you know, would survive. Anyway, he asked me again, if I'd done the banking, I said, no, the marketing, I said, no. He said, I could make you a lot of money. I said, I'm not looking to be a millionaire or anything. Carl, I said, I've just seen an advertisement. I said, I could take my cut of 100 quid.

So anyway, what he started to do, he set a screen up. He called it your screen, your trading platform, something like that. Always go to that first. As soon as you ring him, you always have to go to that. And what that is, is three different figures. They show 200 pound investment. Then there's a figure there that was supposed to be the investment that is made. And then at the end of it, it was how much money you've made.

I sort of shake my head in frustration, but there's also, there's an admiration in a way for just the deviousness of what they do is they start to make you believe you're making money, don't they? You've got to figure, oh look, it's going up. And he even comes out of the reason why you can't draw an ear that out to the real big investment star. So he's covered himself there as well, because obviously that's

There's a lack of liquidity, unfortunately, in the marketplace, which means you can't take money out until we have more money in to enable you to do so. But you're doing so well, because you're already up. Yeah. I hope they don't record that and use that. No, but it's true. I don't know exactly what you're talking about. So there's your want. There's your interest. Yeah. And then he starts talking about his system. His system is very, very good. It's been made over 20 years experience. The only thing that he doesn't like, here's another one,

If you get half way through it and you want to pull out, he really doesn't accept that because of all the hard work he's going to be putting into this. So he's covered himself. He's made you personally loyal to him now, hasn't he? Well, of course. I don't want to use the term because it's a bit of brainwashing goes on in the common parlance, isn't that? He's sucking you in. He's making you loyal to him. He's making you think it's going well.

Uncheckable answers to every one of your questions. He has. He started by taking £30 off of me to set up the Revolut account, as he said. Then he took £1,000 of investment, he said, because if we're going to invest money now, we're going to earn a hell of a lot more. And there's just around the corner,

If that was August, he must have been talking, end of August, early September. Just around the corner, there's the best profitable months coming up, and we need to get into this as soon as we can. He said, otherwise, you'll lose an awful lot of money. He says, stay with me. One of the tips I'm going to give later, how to spot a scam is urgency. The more urgent, the less people you can tell, the more secret, the more likely it is to be a scam. Yeah, that's good. That's good.

And then after that, it was more of a case of the £1,000 came back. You wanted a £1,000, it come back as £990. I never queried the £10 that didn't come back. I don't know why I thought about it, but I never queried it.

Then it goes on. That's true, doesn't it? It's only a tenner and he's doing so great. A job for you. Why would you question it? Yeah, because maybe that tenner is for the investment. Maybe that tenner has gone somewhere else I'm going to get back later. I don't know. I didn't want to question that. As far as I'm concerned at the moment, this guy has got my finances in his pocket and we're going to go with him. We're going to see what this guy can do for me.

And then he took £5,000, which was the only money I'd in my account. The fact of thing is the most funny I've ever made. But he took £5,000 out of my account. And that never did come back. I think all monies went to Revolut.

And then form... So Revolut is the banking provider and he set you up a special account at Revolut, so from your normal bank account. Revolut is a registered UK payment services provider. There's been a recent BBC panorama about the fact that they argued it was easier for fraudsters to use Revolut to bank than other banks. I've never heard of it. OK.

I didn't know they were. But if you had, you would have looked it up and it would have been a bang. It would have been kosher, yeah. As I did this guy, I mean, I've got in touch through Google, four faces come up, all in banking and I'm putting his voice, his age, his family sort of thing round about what this guy would look like. And there was a certain gentleman there. So even that, you know, has been great for him.

Um, then afterwards, as I say, he took the 5,000 pounds that never came back. However, to get the 5,000 pound back, you had to invest 10,000 pounds. You get, um, an email, textbook of how they work, suck you in, get money, and then keep making excuses for you to give them more and more money. That's it. That's it. And in the meantime, I bet your trading accounts showing you up a massive amount of profit, isn't it?

Oh, each day, I mean, now I'm investing my own money. This 20, 30 pounds is now 130, 230, 230, this sort of thing is going up. And of course, like I said, I wasn't allowed to withdraw anything until the day that he tells me that I can because it doesn't exist. I just thought it did.

So, because I haven't got £10,000, he is now in a position because he likes me and because we're getting on so well. He's company will allow £10,000 loan, which has to be paid back within 14 days because apparently that's the rolling with the banks. If it's back within the 14 days, it doesn't even appear. So he's going to raise that and obviously I halted him. I said, look, I haven't got £10,000. You know I haven't got £10,000.

So he said, no, we're allowed to raise it through my company. He said, but we have got because of people like yourself skeptical. He said, I can send you a certificate of satisfaction, which this thing came through online. And it was supposedly written by the CEO of his company.

And it was stating that the £10,000 loan is down to his company and not Mr Healy, or a client as he put in that. But when again, Martin, when you study it afterwards, there's no business number, there's no nothing attached to this certificate. It's just fraudulent details to make you think.

that the £10,000 loan has been raised in his company's name and it was raised in a company. Now they are the bank. I'd never heard of them. So to me, that sounds like his company. And then the whole thing was used again and again to gain the rest of the money. And it kept going up and up.

So what happens next? The scammers decide to ramp it up. They've already taken all of Dez's savings. And now they want to take out a succession of loans with different financial institutions all in Dez's name. So Dez has already given them all his God. And now he's built up a huge pile of debt. All for what?

At what point did you smell a rap? Well, I think after the 10,000 initially, I'd started to smell a rap because the 5,000 hadn't come back. But there was... Have you told anyone you were doing this? I told my son, and my son was actually, because it's only me and my son. We bought him up since he was six. And he said, Dad, he said, they're even playing a rap song in the background. He said, what bank or what call center would be playing a rap song?

And I said, Darren, I don't know. He said, Dad, you need to go to the place. This isn't right. And it was only him by saying, if you don't go to the place, I'm going to go to the place and report you for it. So that was on a Sunday. And on a Monday, we went down to Barclays in Eastbourne and reported it. And of course, I was very sheepish. And I'd be totally honest with you, Martin, even sitting there with the police bar on my side. I still wanted to believe that this was real. I just tell you an aside from your story, just so you know it isn't just you.

I once had someone who worked somewhere connected where my daughter goes, I'm trying to keep it anonymous. A lovely chap, I didn't know him personally, but he'd seen me passing and I spoke to him and he said, just put some money in your investment. I said, I don't have investments. He said, no, you're investment online. I said, what are you talking about? And he showed me and it was a picture of me get rich, quick picture, you know, as is ubiquitous everywhere.

And I said, it's a scam. And he said, it isn't. I said, no, it really is. He says, no, this is you. And I put money in it. It's not a scam. Now, just for everyone listening, he's talking to me. Yeah, and you're the person. I mean, I'm the person literally talking to me directly in the flesh. There is no better way to communicate with me than in the flesh. But and I'm saying to him, you need to listen to me. This is a scam. They are stealing your money.

It was over 15 minutes later I managed to persuade him. He was like you were. He was so involved. His worldview had so been perverted by these psychologically manipulative techniques to suck you in. That even standing directly in front of the person he thought he was paying when that person is saying you're not paying me. It took me over 15 minutes to persuade him. Do you know what? I'm so glad you said that because that's how I was failing.

Yeah. But the problem is, and this is one of the endemic problems in society, it's one of the reasons I campaigned to get the law changed on this, is even people who are trustworthy, you know, I get in these polls, I'm the most trusted person in Britain or whatever it is, that's why they use me. So even someone who's trustworthy, you have to validate that it's really them. You know, I have, I get things from my bank all the time, they're not necessarily my bank.

Now i've just brought in we're going to carry on your story but just joining us now is Chris Ainsley who is head of fraud at santander you are nothing to do with desert case i just want to make that plane to everyone but i'd love to get your take on this as well when we come forward so does you've gone to the police you've gone there how much you're down how much have you got back

At that stage I was 76,000 a day. There was 10,000, there was 10,000. These are all various different lenders. And it's an order how it was done. And MB&ID was 20,000. And then there was Barclays are 30,000. I think I explained that to you earlier, didn't I?

MB&I for some reason within two weeks just cancelled straight away and made a grown man cry because I couldn't believe they cancelled my day and there be no more to answer they said on the phone so that was that. I had to start the procedure because I knew nothing about this mark and I didn't know what I'm going to do.

It was only that a really nice guy from victim support that was... Police victim support. Do you know what I don't know? Police put him on to me, but I don't know if he is, but I couldn't have done anything without this guy. Simon, his name is, and he's wonderful. I spoke to him just yesterday. But he's helped me through what I'm supposed to do, because although I'm gambling, I'm not guaranteed to get any more money back, it's still a system that I can go through. And I wouldn't have known this unless someone like him...

down now. Now, I owe the two 10,000s. They decided that I'm responsible and I must pay it back. The interesting thing here is we have new rules on scams, but they only cover push payments. So when you're making UK bank transfers, that they're going to be covered. Now, you've actually taken out loans at these places, haven't you? So, or on credit cards, just check with credit. That's not covered by the new regulations, is it? I think to be clear,

the money will have gone to an account. So potentially any payments that have then been made to a fraudster would be covered by the regulation if they were authorized push payments. So I think there's definitely some conversations that need to be had. And I know your case has been dealt with by the financial onmbudsman systems. And with the new regulations, are they retrospective? Are they only from cases that have come in since the regulations came in? So the mandatory reimbursement regulations start from the 7th of October. So transactions from that date are covered, transactions before.

will have been covered by any previous schemes, including what was called the APPCRM, the contingent reimbursement model, and that would have applied since 2019. So while we've got you here, and he's not one of yours, so we'd like you to help, what are you going to say to Dares? What should he be doing? And just let's check, because I've been saying, you've heard this story a million times before, haven't you? In a positive way, this isn't just Dares, it's fallen for something. This is a very common way of operating.

Yes, and in reality, if we look at the type of scams that we see that are these push payment scams, Desi's case, in reality, is almost a perfect example of what we'd call an impersonation slash investment scam that has involved him also borrowing the money and as part of a cryptocurrency scam. So this is something we've been seeing for a few years. They're driven off the back of usually social media advertising, often Martin, unfortunately, using yourself as your musk as we've heard.

And in reality, they always start small. And I think what the example we've heard quite clearly shows is that your own money was used first, and then they're literally using that social engineering technique to extract as much out of that as possible. So if you'd got the £70,000 in a bank account, that would have gone. And then the loans would have started.

I think there are some obviously interesting parts of that process that we can probably have some other discussions around, but the key is the hook as you called earlier, which gets you into the start of the process.

Any advice for dads from you, Chris? I think on the loan perspective, obviously, if credit agreement's been signed under the CCA, it could well be that we probably have to have a think about your story, but there is a situation there that suggests that you didn't actually sign that agreement yourself. That might be something to have a look at. But I think in general, there's his current appearance here. It's exactly what we need to do. We need to publicize that this is happening and can happen. Oh, we'll also say, Chris, that

The two banks that feel that I should pay the money back of both said that it's linked to your phone number, your name and your address. So therefore, it's you that did it. Well, I'd obviously said, well, the scammer wouldn't give his own details, would he? He would give yours, but they seem to think that our argument was strong enough to say that's why we need you to do that. And ultimately, in the new regulations, the carve out is gross negligence. Right. If you've been grossly negligent, you don't get refunded.

How high is the bar for gross negligence generally? What are we talking on gross negligence? On purpose, from the payment service regulator, that bar is set really, really high. You would literally almost have had to admit to your bank that you knew you were being scammed and carried on. That's how it... So there's this case

where let's talk in plain language. He thought he was making money and approved these payments because he thought he was dealing with someone who was legitimate. That is not gross negligence. I've been told it is. And that's what you're going to the ombudsman to fight.

Yeah, and this is another thing, no Martin. I mean, this happened last August. We've been dealing with a certain individual in the FOS, which as recently said after nine months, I haven't even made a case for them. So now because there's a massive, there's probably this new change of legislation, there's a massive case coming in. We didn't get any details of that, me and that's Ironman. He's now put me on to another agent who's starting the case now. So it just feels like, you know, I've got done the first time now and being done again.

Has the ombudsman said that these two companies need to freeze dealing with you in the meantime? Are they still chasing you for the money? No, what they've suggested is that Mr. Healy writes to these company and says, could you please hold back? You write to him. I write to him. Well, I would also be tempted to speak to the ombudsman about whether you could have an emergency stop or put an emergency hold on any more interest. There are emergency regulations on the ombudsman.

Apparently, the only thing I've got left now, then that is the actual ombudsman. And if he decides or whoever he or she is, that no, then that's me, finished. Well, you've got to get through that. I hope it goes through. Thank you. The most important thing you've done today, and I hope you can walk out with your head held high because of this, is you have probably stopped a huge number of other people from being put in the position that you have. Well, that sounds very, very sure, and that's good. I like that.

Because for me, it hasn't changed anything yet. I'll still carry on the fight. But like I said to you before, Martin, if I could just briefly say, I was saying to Chris outside that when this first happened, I'd always started off by saying, don't tell anybody, Martin. But last week, and then all of a sudden, I thought, why am I hiding this? I haven't done anything at all. You haven't done? No, you've been caught in a trap.

I have. Just as much as you haven't done anything wrong if someone bashes your door down. Yeah, exactly. You haven't done anything wrong. Des, thank you so much. You really appreciate it. It's quite tough to meet individuals on that case, isn't it, Chris? Sorry. So look, you've got two hats in with me today. There's both, you're an expert on fraud and we're going to suck every drop of that expertise that can get out of you to help people. But you're also ahead of fraud at Santander and therefore you're responsible for dealing with the fraud cases there.

So, let's just go through a few questions with you in a slightly different hat representing your bank. What do you do when you're made aware of the fraud? What happens? What's the first processes the bank takes? I think we need to be clear that if someone contacts us to report fraud, they need to be dealt with as a victim. That has to be that we support them and we do everything we can to stop that fraud from happening and to essentially solve the problem they're reporting to us. That could be as simple as

I've seen some transactions on my debit card I don't recognize or as complex as the case we've just heard that Des was describing to us. That can't always be done on one phone call. Sometimes that will take a longer time to process. But the key thing really is to make sure the customer can understand what they've gone through. And I think just as we were listening to Des talk there, it's quite clear that

he was confused, socially engineered, really kind of taken control of by the criminals. And what we need to do is often, if it's in the middle of that process as well, break that spell. And you mentioned it yourself there under the, under the, you use the word bill, which it's a, it's probably a good word to describe it. So we might have a customer telling us this has gone wrong, or we might be talking to a customer about an unusual payment they've made and have to go

And sometimes those customers will think you're the enemy because they've been told not to tell you anything and that the fraud is going on in your bank, which is why they shouldn't talk to you about it. That's a common one, isn't it? It is a common one. And I think just to bring it back to the sort of personal element here.

I've experienced myself, the fraudsters using my name, my profile on LinkedIn, calling using my name. So I think we're in similar situation. But in terms of the fraudster, although absolutely everything they can to convince somebody to make a payment, do something they wouldn't normally do.

Now, do it now. You need to do it now. It's going to go wrong. Indeed. And, you know, if we're having those conversations, that could mean that we need to do all sorts of different things depending on what they, if it's a romance scam, that will be entirely different to someone who might be making an investment where they want to get that return and that urgency. So we have to train our stuff really, really well and our colleagues have absolutely fantastic conversations with hundreds and thousands of customers a week to do all those things and support them.

Now these scams often involve some kind of money transfer, a one-off or multiple times, even though that is completely out of character for the victim. So if we just look at, and I'm sure it won't mind, we look at theirs. I can't see theirs was somebody who'd be taking out tens of thousands of pounds of loans and transferring that amount of money in a rapid time. Why do you not have algorithms that are stopping that and intervening when that's happening?

Well, I can only speak on par for Sunday. Yeah. And we do. So I'm in charge of those systems. They're not perfect. They are. They're never going to be perfect. It's not an exact science. And what we need to remember is there are people who want to be able to move their money and very quickly. And I'll be very candid, Martin. Every time you'll say there's a great interest rate out there, a lot of our customers will suddenly start moving money around. And one of those things is it's quite easy to see if that money's going to your own account.

And in the current world, in the case, Des described as the perfect example, he was really moving money to another account, another bank in his own name from where he was sending it from. So if that bank is able to identify unusual transactions, it will. People will have experienced this on there, making a debit card transactional or even making payments. What we have to do is keep up with the fraudsters on that. We keep training those systems are statistical models, AI, machine learning, whatever you want to call it, learns from every single payment, every single day to do that. But as you said, it's never going to be an exact science.

Now, I was looking at your Santander League tables. In terms of receivers of scams, you actually do very well. In terms of very little amount, you are the 20th out of 20 in the number of banks of receiving money from scamsters. So, in other words, you're not the scammers bank of choice. Not the mule bank. But why do these scammers? How are they able to keep their bank accounts open and not have the money nicked off them? How are they able to open so many bank accounts? In general, not your bank.

I think money muelling is a really interesting thing, and I've been doing this 23 years next month, and we've always dealt with people that have received fraudulent funds of some type into their account, and they fall into many different categories. You will have accounts that have been opened by criminals.

They will have used false documentation and so on and so forth. That's going to be more rare nowadays. You know, if you open an account somewhere, you're scanning your ID. You're doing all those checks. You also get people that have been essentially conned themselves into becoming a money meal. So they will be there being tricked into giving someone their card and access to their account for a small fee or because of some other kind of involvement they've got with that person.

You might then also find that there are criminal networks that all use people's accounts legitimately. They might be using businesses and so on and so forth to launder that money through. So it's a complicated situation. But in general, one of the things that really is balancing out in the regulations we talked about that started in the 7th of October, those receiving banks for the first time will be taking that liability as part of that. So they will be encouraged by that process to take more of that responsibility on the accounts they've opened and managed.

Now we have these new banking push payment rules that we discuss with debts. They cover scams where the money has been sent across or pushed across all banks building society's e-money firms and saving providers are included. It means that you'll get a refund up to 85,000 pounds. The limit had been set by the payment services regulator at 415,000 pounds, which was a good one. It was lobbied down. I think that was a mistake. You may well disagree. I want to talk to you though about the excess.

because firms have the option to charge them in excess of up to £100. Nationwide TSB and Virgin say they won't charge in excess. You, as in Santander, amongst others, Barclays and Chase and Co-op say you may charge £100 excess.

Why? So we'll apply the excess on those cases based on whether the customer's vulnerable as well, which is part of the regulation. And that really is to make sure that we can ensure that where we're managing customers and their payments, they're taking the right controls in the warnings that we're doing on our website. So why do you feel they should lose 100 quid?

So as part of the process, I think what we're really trying to manage here is there are some real problems in the way in which people are managing their payments. And we do a lot of our work to really focus on making sure that people are protected when they're using their account. The smaller value payments are often purchases. They're often small payments at the start of a run of payments that are frauds that may encourage a customer to make. And in the main, there will be small value purchase scams, which will often recover the funds on any way and we may have protected the

And it's 100 pound total excess, not 100 pounds per payment, is it? Right, 100 pound per each case. Okay, well, I mean, that's a decision of profitability. I have lots of other things I'd like to ask you, but I actually want to do some questions that we've had from the people have written in. So I have Andy here. If I get a call supposedly from my bank, how can I be sure it really is them?

There's some really simple advice. I think if you get a call from someone pretending to be your bank, my advice is always to hang up. And I know full well that my name has been used to call people. There are a couple of ways to do that. One is if you've got your debit card, hang on them. Sorry, hang up very politely, of course, because it may be them genuinely. But you can also dial 159 straight from your phone to take you through to your bank if you just tell them your name.

So I would go even further than that. I would always try. If your bank's called you saying it wants some information, I would always call it back. I would preferably call it back on a different phone, just in case that they are keeping the dial number on so you then think you're calling your bank back.

but they are staying on the line and they're faking a down number. If you don't have another phone, you could wait 10 or 15 minutes or you could call a family member first because if you go and call your husband or your wife or your kid, then you know that they're not on the line and then you call the bank and that 159 number, a diagonal line from the top left to the bottom right of your phone keyboard will then put you through to most banks. So you dial it and it's been done as an anti-scam prevention measure. I'm fully supportive of it. One, five,

9. Taylor Eevee. I'm getting to the point where I'm worried that every single thing whether on the phone or in the post is a scam. How do you identify it? It's not the worst attitude to have. It's terrible for commerce. It's why I've lobbied for many advertisers out there for years to look at their social media advertising and know that they're up next to these scams.

What do you do? You're the head of fraud. I mean, this is your life. How do you check out whether something's legit or not? I think it's really difficult as the question asks, which is how are you ever going to prove that someone is genuine? I think we're completely and utterly. Every single person who's got a mobile phone, an email address,

a social media account has been the intended victim of a scam. In general, those things that come to you, you should probably already be aware of nothing will come to you out of the blue. So if it's a bank statement or a notification, you've got that that's what you need to be looking out for is someone trying to get you the information. So get your information from you. So that could be asking you for your name and address details where they'd already have it.

that could be asking you for payment details, or you wouldn't be expecting them. And how I always think about it is, are they trying to get you to do something you wouldn't normally do, making a payment, giving out information. And in reality, I tend to assume that if there really is a problem, I'll be notified through a genuine channel. So for a bank, for example, push notification in your mobile app is always going to be the best thing that you can get, because you know that's come directly from them on the app.

absolutely and you know be very careful when someone is trying to get you to click a link or if it's someone you've not heard from has sent you a text and they're asking you to send stop you have to be aware that by sending stop you've just notified that you're a real mobile phone number and you could get more scams on the back and it's all very it is a really difficult minefield jane mace and i get this one i'm concerned that my bank warns every single online transaction i do could be a scam so there doesn't seem to be any identification of the risk level on their part

I assume other banks are doing the same, they certainly are. It isn't helpful to the customer. We are overloaded by anti-scan messages that there's a worry that it's being done to legally protect you rather than being done on a more intellectual and intelligent way in order to help us identify when there is a risk or not.

I understand how that feels as someone who designed a lot of those warnings. What I would say is they have changed over time. So a few years ago, where we have put those warnings on, that was the first way really of getting a customer to understand if you're buying something, this is the type of risk you're taking. If you're making a payment for an invoice, this is the kind of risk. They've now developed into much more dynamic questions. So what we now have is those parts of our process that might say, are you buying something off a social media marketplace?

do these things. They're much more instructive rather than a warning. To be very clear, they're not there to avoid any kind of liability. They're really there to protect the customer and they're there to do that because it's much easier for us to prevent a fraud than have to manage the victim of the fraud after it's happened.

Just if it makes anybody feel better out there. I, on many occasions, have had to call a bank to move money and have had, you know, when they read the message, there's a long script that they've been given that they have to read to check. It's not a scam. And the person on the other end of the line has realized it's me, as in they know it's Martin Lewis off telling or off radio or off this podcast.

and they're going, I'm sorry, I have to read this to you. You may not be aware that there are scammers who impersonate. We have to go through the old script. But then again, that's this friction that we have, both with money laundering and scam versus easy accessible and swift payments. And it is a friction. And I'm afraid the cost of the criminality and frankly, the cost of our under-resourcing our police forces and the cost of our lack of regulations on social media, that means that we are a wild West.

and a euphoric place for scammers to steal money off people without being prosecuted is why we all pay for it with slow banking transactions. I think there's a part of it that there is an ecosystem there. The frauds can start on social media, but there really is things that the financial industry can do as well. That is collaboration between the organisations. That's more work together. That might be changes to our payment system itself. And those are things that over the next few years, you will really start to see some changes.

Michelle, I got a call from a scammer that pretended to be the fraud team from my bank and managed to tell me what my last three transactions were. How did she know? The red flag was up when she asked for the one-time password. I hung up. What do you think? How would that happen? Or is that perhaps legit?

I think there's a couple of ways it could happen. One of those could be that they've already got some of her details and most potentially log into something to see what those were, but the one-time password was potentially to make a payment. Shouldersurfing on a mobile phone and Nick to mobile phone. Could be a mobile phone. The most common scams that we see and the ones where you will get someone impersonating a bank.

And certainly the ones where they were impersonating me were off the back of a text message from a delivery company. And literally the details were put in and the card transaction details were put in. And they knew what bank it was just from the first few digits of the card. And that's how they... And other thing people don't put too much of your private information on your social media accounts, your date of birth, your maiden names, all of these things that are commonly used because then if they've managed to do that scamming, your phone number, they've now got your name because they said you owe us £1.20, please pay us. So you've paid them on a card without realising it.

and then they can work out what your social media is and they can put them all together, and you've used an obvious password or passcode, you know, you're starting to get quite close. Yeah. And it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it,

Mary, regarding the banks, why don't they check people properly before giving them a card machine? I got scammed by a person posing as a well-known sports company with a fantastic sale. I paid my credit card online, the goods didn't turn up, although the false tracker system said they'd arrived. I contacted the company and it no longer existed. The bank reimbursed me, but had they done their homework, it would have saved a lot of money and grief. So again, it goes back, why are these type of accounts? And I'm sure we don't know. You know, you are just one bank, but we've got you here, sir. May as well, you understand this industry better than I do.

In the example that's been described there, that's obviously someone setting up a company, taking a card transaction. Obviously, that person would be covered for goods and services not received through a chargeback process or depending on how they're used to the card. But in terms of in general,

There are huge amounts of identification and verification processes that are required. They're never going to be always perfect. And one of the things that we need to remember is that this is a layered approach to how these banks are adopting it. So there might be transaction monitoring they've got in place, identifying, re-identifying those people. It would be very interesting to understand what that particular fraud was because we've had a huge number of social media triggered shopping scams recently that we've publicized as well, where someone thinks they're buying a

dress or a pair of shoes online for a bargain price, what ends up happening is their card is compromised in use somewhere else. So the amount of these frauds are happening, they vary, but there's always a new one out there. And final one, Dawn, please cover SimSwap fraud. Are you worried about the growth of SimSwap fraud? I mean, because of course, this is one-time password codes come through your Sim. Where's that figuring on your warning radars at the moment? SimSwap fraud has been around a long time.

Use of one time passwords via SMS going back 10, 15 years has meant that sim swap fraud was one of the core ways you could get around that control. What I would say is most organizations that use SMS in some way, they have controls over that and we can identify based on when we send the message whether or not your sim has been swapped.

So if you have recently changed your phone, you might find that if you're using SMS, you might find the bank having a conversation with you about that transaction. We'll ask you for more details on that, because we don't want to give any information to the people who are trying to scam people out there. Certainly not. But I will nod and agree. So while I've still got Chris here, what I want to do now is give you my top tips to protect yourself against scams. I'm not going to include the old saying, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. But that's what you have to remember on all this. Chris, if you give me a nod, if there's anything you want to add to these, I'm going to start with

Fake HMRC tax refunds. If you get an email, a suspicious text or a WhatsApp or voicemail or phone call from HMRC, it isn't them. Ignore it. Don't go anywhere near it. You will be contacted formally if you own a tax refund or if you owe them tax.

HMRC warns very carefully about these scams and that can generally apply to all forms of official communications. People use these more official bodies to try and scare you into reacting quickly. Always go and legitimately check on the website that you've independently searched and found their own web details or contact them via a phone number that you found yourself, not via the phone number that they've given. That's a big thing. If they send a phone number to call, don't dial their phone number. Even if it's legit,

go find the number yourself and dial through that way. Beware hyperlinks on the internet. A hyperlink is the link that you click. Now I could very easily set up a hyperlink that said bbc.co.uk and underneath the underlying link went to itv.co.uk. That is very easy to do or vice versa. I'm not favoring one or the other. My podcast is on one. My TV shows on the other, but you can do that. So if you want to be a bit more sophisticated, if you hover your mouse over the link,

you can see the underlying link it's sending you to, and it's the bit just before the .com that matters. For example, I had one the other day which said something like defraud-x.com that was pretending to be from x or Twitter, as it now is, but it wasn't from x. It was defraud-x, which is not the same as x, so I thought instantly it's a scam. But if you're not sure, just be very careful and be aware that those can easily be manipulated.

Watch out for fake deals on your social media. Look for stats, spelling and grammar issues, although they're getting better unfortunately because of AI. And even if the images look legit, always then independently go to one of those shops or service companies websites yourself. Be very wary again, if you've been asked to pay upfront, you should never have to pay to access prizes or funds that you are due. Anybody asking you to pay to access your own money

is very, very dodgy. I can't think of any real situations where they're going to do that, barring your working for a solicitor who has to pay a fee for convincing or something like that, that you've self-appointed. But no one who's getting in touch with you that you don't know to do that sounds like the legit at all. So on the social media marketplaces or social media, paying for something via a bank transfer should be relatively unusual. Most things you'll take a great debit or credit card is the way to go for most of those firms. And if you're seeing things, especially on a sort of marketplace post for tickets,

or for luxury goods, or potentially for a car as well. Don't pay for it until you've touched it. That's the advice we give you. That's the advice you'll get on one of those warnings we talked about on the site on the show earlier. It's the way forward. Your bank transfer notes important even outside the world of scams. Because you have some protection for scams.

But someone spoke to me the other day they'd paid for an Airbnb, they'd done this on a bank transfer, the house had now been bought, so it probably isn't a scam, but the new person isn't necessarily giving them a refund, so that probably wouldn't come under your push payment scam authorization because it wasn't a scam.

And you have far less protection on a bank transfer than you do on a credit card especially, but a debit card also. So always your strongest payment protection is debit or credit card, whether it's a scam or not. And so I will and cash and check you get zip. So I would always strongly urge you to look at if you're going to pay for retail goods. If they're asking for bank transfers, why? Why do they want a bank transfer?

Secondly, you've already mentioned the fake sites that are for shopping. So you'll see an advert for a dress that might look like the genuine site. What I would say is those particular types of scams are quite insidious. They won't just take a card details and steal another transaction. They often, behind the scenes, will try and register your card for Apple Pay or Google Pay. They're registering other things in the background. So they are really quite dangerous in the way they happen. And often we pick them up and we'll speak to the customer, but you are not really understanding what's going on behind the scenes on those.

QR codes. QR codes very easy to defraud a QR code. Stick another QR code over the legitimate one. So just be very careful what URL, what link you're actually being sent to. What I would recommend is if you're paying for parking, something like that, you'll usually find that they're all very similar apps, pay by phone or some of the others. Use the app rather than trying to use the scan by the QR code.

Look out for elderly friends or relatives. If you're concerned, there's a wonderful website called ThinkJessica.com that can really help and shows how some elderly people can become serious victims of scams. We talked before about social conditioning and brainwashing

unfortunately for many elderly people who tend to as they get older and dementia starts to set in can be much more trusting they're very easy to be pulled into scams when they believe more people than they would otherwise and we've had cases in the case of Jessica in the think Jessica name itself is where

A lady whose mother was believing the scammers more than her own daughter and it caused huge family problems which is why she set up the charity. Banks do not call people like that. They'll be sending push notifications in the mobile app. They might be sending other things to you. If you get a phone call from someone who tends to be a bank, no bank is going to mind whatsoever if you say to that person, I'm going to call you back to the genuine number and 1.59 is the perfect solution.

Yeah, you can even, even, and if it is genuine, you could say, once I get through, what's the best way to get to your department? Because let them tell you, if it's a scammer, it doesn't matter, because you're gonna get through to the proper department anyway. But I would never talk to my bank when they've called me apart from to say, I will call you back.

Just a couple before you go, a couple of quick things. And this may be things that politically you're not able to say. But I'm going to ask you anyway. Do we resource our police well enough in this country to deal with fraud and scams? Fraud is 40 odd percent of all reported crime. From a banking perspective, there is a funded police force, the DC PCE, who are dedicated to these kind of cases, but there's no way they can support all of the frauds that we see.

And there is no way that there is support for all the frauds that can be reported for every single person to be investigated and treated in the same way across the country. Is it fair to say, well, I would always recommend people report their crimes to action fraud and you want a police number, especially. So it's important to do. Often nothing will happen from the police on that side. And this isn't a go at individual police officers. This is about the resourcing that we put into fraud in this country.

I think from a scale perspective, it's most likely that you're not going to get on an individual case traction. What I have found, especially over the last few years, is where we've managed to gather those cases together and put them to the police. They have taken some information. When there's a sort of systemic fraud that's going on. And fraud is usually organized, let's be very clear. So there's been a lot of media over some of the larger cases, even that we've done through banks and the police and some foreign organisations to

to take out some big networks of scammers. But again, they are larger cases and there might be lots of small frauds linked to that. But the original victim may never have found out that they were part of that investigation. And on a similar vein, regulation of online websites, is it strong enough to protect people from fraud at the moment? I think we need to understand where a lot of the scams and frauds that we're talking about start. And we've already mentioned it several times. Social media is one of the biggest drivers of all of the fraud we see. It's outside of the financial system and whether it's not a direct connection between the payment you or I might make on our mobile app.

to what's going on outside of that, there's always going to be a problem. So bringing firms into that ecosystem, or whatever you want to call it, to be part of that journey, they are fundamentally part of the answer, is a core thing that we need to do. And that really is a case of explaining what is going on in all parts of that journey. So if I wanted to be able to report a fraud today,

I've been scammed on a social media website, do I report it to my bank? That's where I made the payment, to report it to the police, to report it to that social media platform. It's unclear what should happen. My advice, go straight to your bank, get that sorted first, but in reality you're unlikely to get much of a response for anyone else at the moment.

Well, you report your bank, make sure you get a police number and report it on the social media website as well, because it might stop someone. It won't not going to help you, but as a sort of social policing, it might help somebody else if it's eventually taken down. Chris, I really think it's important that someone in your position, head of fraud at Santander, is coming out, is talking these issues, you know, is taking the questions, whether it's a bit more difficult about your own institution, but it's also telling people how it works from your end. So I'm very appreciative for you coming on the podcast. Thank you very much.

So we've heard the impact that scams have, and we've heard to an extent the frustration that one of the big banks has about the way that scams work. Well, the organization tasked with dealing with that is the regulator off-con. So it's probably time to talk to them.

Now, I'm very pleased to be joined by Lindsey Fussell, who is group director for online safety at the regulator, Ofcom. And Ofcom is taking responsibility for this huge online sector. I mean, it's a big job, isn't it? It is a big challenge, but we've got the online safety act in place now. And we're very much seeing next year as a year of action where we can get the rules in place and we can finally start to hold platforms to account for what they're doing to protect users.

So you say that's 2025 when you think we'll be starting to get this in place, but that's not really going to happen till 2026 for scam adverts, is it? It's true that the act has always been implemented in phases. So the first phase, which is really important for fraud, is a legal harms code, and that's going to be published in December. And that means from next spring platforms will have to do a range of things. For the first time, they're going to have to risk assess their platforms.

about what kind of harmful contents on there. And they'll have to take steps to deal with that. And that will include things like making it easy for users like you and me to report where we think we've seen scams or fraud.

It will mean that they have to have properly trained and resourced content moderation teams so they can take the content down. And they'll also have to have a trusted route for organisations like law enforcement to be able to go to platforms and say that they've seen scam content and it needs to be dealt with. So that's the first phase, but there is more to cover. You're talking about harms. Can you define what is counted as a harm and what isn't counted as a harm when we're talking about scam adverts and scam content?

Absolutely. So Parliament has set out what they've called priority illegal harm, so particular kinds of harm that they want us to focus on. And one of those is fraud. You're absolutely right that this first phase is what's called user-generated. It's an awful phrase. But what that means is if somebody, like your eye, upload something onto a site, and that could be say a

something on Facebook Marketplace, wanting to sell something which doesn't actually exist. It could be a romance scam, it could be somebody trying to persuade somebody to engage with them, to persuade them that they need to transfer money to them. And that's the type of content that's caught by this first phase.

scam ads is caught by the final phase. And that's where the fraudulent advertising code comes in, which is going to apply to the largest platforms. So there's a couple of things I just need to pick up then. So scam ads, which is the main thing we're talking about here, we're talking 2026.

That's right, so important to explain. So scam ads, that's about paid for adverts. So the ones that these big platforms, these big international tech companies, the ones that they make money from, and they make money from scam advertisers who then have criminally affect victims hundreds of thousands across these countries, we're not touching them, we're letting them do that till 2026.

So important to explain a bit about how that's what the plan is there. As I say, that's always been intended to be the final phase of the act. It's actually up to government and parliament to set the thresholds for which platforms are caught by that. The last government wasn't able to do that before the election, didn't do that. And so the election has delayed things. We're very much hoping that legislation is going to be put in place very soon, and that will then enable us to take action. And we hope to subject to that, be able to publish our first consultation on that at the back end of next year.

Now I'm torn here because you can probably hear I'm pretty angry about how long this has all been taking. It's been years since I sued Facebook, none of this is a new issue. We've lived in this Wild West with this scam epidemic for years in the country.

But I am also aware as, you know, I was the main voice lobbying for scam adverts to put in the online safety act, which they were not originally in the online safety act. That's right. I am aware that much of the sloth comes from the timetable you have been set rather than from your own sloth. I am aware Ofcom is doing what Ofcom has to do at the pace that it's been set. We have seen some delays to 2026. It could have been a bit quicker.

But that's what you've been told to do, which is deeply frustrating. The second bit I want to pick up just so people understand. So let's be really played. I'm going to ask you a question, and I know you're here to represent an organisation, but honestly, if you went online now and you saw an advert, would you trust it?

Well, I'd certainly want to think about what there was to make me trust it. And actually, I would say this isn't just about ads. As you know, I've come also deal with scam calls and texts, and we've been doing that for quite a bit longer. I think, you know, the first piece of advice I'd give to anybody whenever they see something is to think up just to stop and think. I think the thing is that the way our communication systems are designed is to be really seamless, isn't it?

to kind of make us do things quickly. And that's fantastic in lots of ways. But I think what we're seeing is that criminals are using that precisely to prey and exploit us. So actually that stopping thinking, does that look right? What's there? Is there any way I can check whether that looks sensible? Is the first piece of advice I'd give to anybody? When I talk about advertising on online platforms, social media platforms, I call it a Wild West. Am I wrong?

Well, I think, you know, what we know is that around 9 in 10 adults in the UK tell us that they've seen something online, which they think could be a scam or a fraud. Doesn't mean that they've necessarily fallen for that, but there's no doubt that there is a huge amount of this content out there.

and that there is huge amounts to do and we are very much looking forward to the point where we can have our rules in place, that we can hold platforms to account for that and we've got powerful enforcement powers if they don't step up to the mark.

Translation, you don't have any enforcement coming in for these type of platforms until 2026. It really is still the Wild West out there because there are a few protections at the moment. I just want to make it. I get you have your lines that you have to say, but let's just be very plain. There are very few protections from scam adverts out there for me people on social media right now.

Fraudulent advertising code you're absolutely right is not going to be in place until 2026. And that fraudulent advertising code only covers the biggest players, doesn't it? That's right, that's the structure of the act.

There was meant to be, and again, you'll know I was involved in lobbying and pushing for better regulation when the act was coming in place. The talk was there would be an online advertising code which would be separate and would be brought in place to protect people on the, you know, outside those giant international tech firms, all the other sites that people use from scam adverts.

I've not heard anything on that. Have you heard anything on that? That, when I'm afraid, is no matter for the government, it was always the government that was taking forward that work. So I'm afraid that's one you'd have to put to them. But you haven't heard anything. You haven't been told to put that in place. Ofcom isn't putting that in place because you don't have it. So I just want to be very plain so people listening understand this.

We will have to wait until 2026 before the biggest platforms are covered by off-com regulation over scam advertising. Paid for advertising, that's right. Paid for scam advertising, of course. As I say, we do really believe that the illegal harm stuff that is coming in much earlier, we can enforce on that from next spring, we'll have a material impact on all sorts of... I understand.

I'm not attacking your organization. I'm attacking our entire legal and regulatory structure around scams in this country here. Until 2026, paid for scam advertising, you are not protected online. After 2026, you will only be protected on the very biggest platforms and there will continue to be a Wild West for all the smaller platforms out there. There is no regulation that covers those smaller platforms on paid for advertising. That's right.

Yeah, OK, it's deeply it's not your fault. I'm not attacking you as an individual. I'm not even particularly attacking off-com because you can only use the powers that you have been given. But it's an absolute something show is what I'd like to say about it in reality. Let me move on. Isn't one solution here that we need to include proper verification of advertisers on all of these platforms?

we allow advertising to be done too quickly and too easily. I mean, these big tech firms, they're not saying we want scammers on our platforms. They're saying we want to make it easy for anyone to advertise, which makes it easy for scammers to advertise. So if you go to traditional media television, for example, they have to pre-vet everybody who shows an advert on television. Why doesn't Facebook, why doesn't X, why doesn't Instagram have to pre-vet its advertisers and say, you're having an approved advertiser, you're not a proved advertiser. Are we going to change the rules on that?

Well, I think that's exactly the kind of thing that we're going to be wanting to look at as part of the code that we've been talking about. I think what you're talking about is those kind of know your customer checks, right, where actually you can't just accept content from anyone. You've actually got to know who's giving it to you and have done some checks and some due diligence on that. It's the same thing that we ask telecoms companies to do when they're thinking about who they're using numbers for, for example. So I think that's a really important part of it. And then I think the second really important thing to think about is

when you get reports that perhaps your platform or your telephone system is being used by bad people, by criminals, let's be clear, then you actually do something about that really quickly.

Thank you. Lindsay, I've got more questions for you, but I just want to do a couple from listeners if that's OK. So this one is from Marie. She says, why are companies not held to account for allowing UK numbers to be presented as the dialing number from outside the UK when any legitimate use of number masking call centers on behalf of a business have to fill out forms and register their legitimate use?

They have the power to block calls and don't leading to scammers accessing victims. This could totally be avoided. So outside UK numbers being presented as UK, are you going to do something about that number masking? Well, the good news is we have. So in landline calls, we've now told telecoms companies to block exactly those calls. Other than in a few legitimate cases like call centres, those calls that have come from overseas and look to have a UK number should be blocked.

BT, just to give you an example of that, tell us that in the first month they blocked a million calls. So that gives you a sort of sense of the scale of the amount of calls that being blocked. I should say it's a bit more complicated for mobile, because if you think about it, when your IR overseas and we call home, that's exactly going to look like a UK number coming from overseas. So the next thing we're working on, and actually this is something that

Regulators, although... So the thing that regulators across the world are working on now is how we can tackle that problem. And because what we're seeing is, since we put these in, a bit of a movement from landline spoofing into mobile. So that's the next big thing to tackle, but on landlines, that's already in place. And this is part of the problem, isn't it? This is international organised crime with big money raking in big money. It's not some guy in the back of a shop somewhere having a go.

They're sophisticated, they're commercially sophisticated, they're psychologically sophisticated. Is Ofcom really the right regulator for this job? I understand on telecoms it is, but wanted it being better on the online side, which is so big and so sophisticated in its own right to have had a specialist regulator. I mean, we've almost got

mission creep offcom is going to have to become so big to cope with this. Can you cope? I know you'll say you have to, but can you? Well, I think we can. You know, I think it's actually quite if you think of what offcom has been working on actually since it was first first first founded about 20 years ago. We've always worked with with telecoms companies. We've always worked with with broadcasters and a lot of all of those those activities have gone online.

So a lot of our work already is in that online space. And so we've already had to start working out how we're going to tackle these questions. I think we're building up a really great team to take on our online responsibilities. We've hired people both from the platforms themselves, but also from law enforcement and elsewhere. I think the other thing, though, I'd want to be really clear is that we are not going to solve this on our own.

Part of this, particularly when it comes to things like scams and fraud, is the need to work really closely with government, with law enforcement, with other regulators like the Financial Conduct Authority. This one is something that we all have to play our part in tackling.

It's interesting for me and I think the regulatory industry, but whether it's official regulators like yourself or, you know, trade body regulators like the advertising standards authority have been very slow to adapt on this. I need to be honest. I remember when I first complained about scams using my name to the ASA and they said, well, we can only regulate advertisers who will agree to abide by our rules.

And what's the point? What's the point of a regulator? And I don't think people were set up. You talked about broadcasters and telecoms companies. In a way, it's quite easy to regulate ITV and Virgin and Vodafone. I mean, you'd probably say it isn't. But at least you could go to a chief executive who's got a responsibility to a PLC and legal director's regulation. It's very difficult to some organized criminal sitting 3,000 miles away who's trying to tackle. It's a very different job, isn't it?

Well, actually, when you think about scams and fraud on telecoms, and we're talking about on your phone, on whether that's calls or texts, that's exactly what we've been trying to work to tackle with for some years. I think you're absolutely right. And if you talk to the National Crime Agency and others, they will point out that this is actually, this activity is cover for money laundering, for drugs, for serious organized crimes. So this is scams and fraud.

absolute scourge for the people who experienced them, but they are also being used to, you know, to take forward all sorts of other, you know, crime that we find that we find deeply, you know, is clearly deeply offensive and awful. So with that in mind, when it comes to scam adverts, as opposed to the other harms and look, I totally understand you're looking at child pornography and you're looking at other, you know, horrible issues that are going on out there.

But the way to stop big platforms promoting scams is to make it more expensive for them to publish scams than not to publish scams, so that you will find them more than they make from allowing easy, accessible advertising. You have the power to do that.

How big would an issue have to be for you to do? It's 10% of turnover is that? That's right, global turnover. 10% of global turnover, which for a Facebook is tens of billions of pounds or probably more. How big would an issue have to be for you to start to try to use those powers?

We'll be ready to use our enforcement powers straight away as soon as the rules come in. Of course, we'll want to try and work with the platforms wherever we can to move them to compliance without the need for fines, because that's the quickest way to get action. I'd love them to behave, it'd be much better.

But if they won't, then we will absolutely be ready to use our enforcement powers and to levy fines if we have to. How do you levy a fine? Are you subject to a court challenge if you levy a fine or judicial review? We can be appealed against for our fines. That's true across all of everything that Ofcom does. But the decision to investigate, to find a breach, and to decide on the size of fine is Ofcom's to make. I'm going to do another listener question here now. This is from Adrian.

I recently swapped from Sky to Virgin, so lost use of Sky Torque Shield. This was a great free deterrent to phone scammers as they would hear the automated voice and hang up. Virgin's equivalent? Nothing. Nothing at all. So the scam calls flooded in from day one and I do mean day one. So my question, why does Ofcom not insist that all providers provide an equivalent service, particularly to vulnerable customers like the Elgit elderly?

There's loads of these kinds of products out there. Some of them absolutely are used by, you know, but that phone companies have. Others, you can find yourself and install. So there's an awful lot of these systems out there. But you're not going to make sure they have to have them for vulnerable customers and people on the priority server.

Well, I think that's going to depend on the situation for each individual company. And I'd be interested to follow up and see what Virgin has in place, to be honest, to find out if there is a problem with how effective their system is. What I would say, though, is that those systems are only part of the solution. So they're great for picking up calls that have been blacklisted, for picking up numbers that have been blacklisted.

It's obviously much more challenging if those numbers are spoofed or being impersonated on, which is why we need the other measures we were talking about. And finally, I don't know of any system that's going to pick up every scam call. So if you think of a wall and people just throwing millions and millions of rocks at it every day, that's what people trying to use our phone and tech systems looks like.

absolutely we're there with others to try and strengthen that wall, but some of them will get through it. So people do have to carry on being vigilant and on their guard. I appreciate that. And I think no one's we're never going to stop all scams, but the numbers and the volumes that we have in this country are horrific at the moment. And so the key is, you know, if we could not 90% of them out, that would be a good start.

So, when I've met tech firms, you'll know I sued a tech firm over this. The answer they always give me is, well, the technology is very difficult, to which case my answer is technology, textmology. I didn't ask you to use technology. If you have a requirement, then get people, individual, human beings, they still exist. Get them to manually vet these things.

How have the tech companies responded to this regulation when you're dealing with them? Because I know we're talking about the regulation for scam ads coming in in 2026. But I presume before that, you'll be starting to embed yourself with these tech firms and make sure that they're getting the systems ready in advance. And we might see some behavioral improvements. Are they being responsive or are they still culture ordering you because we're only in 2024?

So, as we were talking about earlier, we've actually got rules coming in in 2025. So, absolutely, we've already... But we've already had to start talking to platforms about the rules that are coming in and we've got dedicated teams working with each of the larger platforms to do that, to understand how their systems currently work and to talk to them about what their plans are going to be to come into compliance.

We're encouraged. We have seen some platforms take action on certain kinds of problems. People will have seen those announced in recent weeks and months. But we're not naive or complacent either. We absolutely hope the platforms will work with us and they will come to do what they should do to meet the rules. But if they don't, we are there and we have the powers to step in.

Lindsay Fossil, director for online safety at Ofcom. I really appreciate it. It's very important the regulator comes out and talks on these issues. I also accept that you can only do what your organization has the power to do. And arguably, I think I probably have to go out there and push for you to have more powers. I wish it would have all been done quicker, but there are so many firms who aren't going to be caught by the regulations in future. There is still a real danger even once you take over. I wish you the best of luck and more power to your organizational elbow with it. Thank you very much.

Now of course we've been talking about lots of different types of scams, but actually understanding the granular detail of what scams are out there are important. And that West has just put out some research on the 10 fastest growing scams out there this year. So I'm going to go through them in good old top 10 type style for you.

In number 10 is get rich quick investment schemes. These are fraudulent schemes that promise high returns with little risk or effort they've been around a long time. In at number 9, deep fake celebrity endorsement scams. Well of course, that's what we started this whole podcast about. So deep fake videos using AI are where people are talking to you, telling you to invest in something. Be very careful, the lips are often the giveaway there.

And number eight are refund scams where scammers claim you wrote a refund and they do that in order to steal your personal and your financial information So that when you click the link and you tell them what you need then they can come back and attack your finances number seven

Tax rebate scams. Been around for a long time. HMRC is never going to email you about a tax rebate in that way. It will tend to write to you. It will have a formal communication. Be very, very wary of anything offering you a fake tax rebate. And number six, cost of living assistance scams. We've seen this grow a lot this year. You get a link being sent through and information saying click here and you're able to claim some money for the cost of living support that's available.

Not true, it's not going to work in that sense. You know, winter fuel payment, it doesn't work. You can't click a link for winter fuel payment. That's about being eligible for pension credit. In at number five, event ticket scans. Well, it's been the year of Tay Tay Taylor Swift's been all over the place. Lots of big tickets sold everywhere, so no surprise. Event ticket scans counterfeit or non-existent tickets to popular events, gigs, concerts, or sport games are growing in the scamosphere.

Now in at number four is money request from friends or family scams this is where scammers pose as someone you know to urgently request an urgent is always the key word the more urgent it is the more wary you should be because that is a classic indication of a scam they don't want to give you thinking time it's often through phone email or social media is to try and exploit your trust

Number three, AI voice cloning scams. This is where victims are deceived by somebody they know's voice that has been cloned, asking for urgent money often in desperation. It's very, very difficult for people. You have to be wary. You have to try and check on the back end. But of course, if you hear from someone you love that they need money urgently, most people instantly go into a flight or fight response and want to try and help them. That's what the scammers are trying to manipulate horrible people that they are.

And number two, social media marketplace scams. So Facebook marketplace, Instagram, TikTok, where people are selling things. Fake profiles are created. They advertise popular indie man goods to stolen photos from real sellers are quite common. And they list attractive offers to lure the victims into making purchases. Again, be careful in what you're buying on social media marketplaces. Make sure that they are truly real. And number one,

very devious, fake parcel delivery tax. This is where you get a little tax saying you need to pay slightly more in order to get your goods. And people do it because it's only 86P. What does it matter how frustrating? I don't know what the item is. I order lots of items. They click on it. They pay the goods and you're putting your bank details in. You're putting your payment details in and you have just opened up the door to the organized criminal world that are scammers.

If you're getting a text about delivery and you're not sure what the past list, please go and do your research and check whether it's something genuine or not before you're clicking the links. That's the top 10. So we've heard from the victim. We've heard from the banks. We've heard from the regulator. But this is a crime. So let's talk to the police.

Now, I'm delighted to say joining me now is Commander Stephen Clayman, who is head of Specialist Crime for the Metropolitan Police Service. Okay, I'm going to start harsh, because for many years with my day job hat on, I have recommended that when people are scammed or defrauded, they contact action fraud. Now, I do that because that is part of the process that you should do.

But in my view, the vast majority of people who go to action fraud get nothing from it. It is totally flaccid. Their crimes are not investigated and they feel very frustrated. That isn't a kick at the police or action fraud per se. I suspect it's primarily because the organizations are under resourced. Is action fraud doing enough? Are the police doing enough on scams? Well,

I'll answer it in two parts, I suppose. So action fraud is the right, the mechanism, and it is important that those are affected by fraud, do use that mechanism. Because not only does it report it, it teaches about methodology and tracking exactly what's happening. Does it do enough? Action fraud is changing. The City of London police are the national lead on fraud. And I'll probably best place to talk about how it's changing, and it is changing to a site different system, which I think will be more responsive to some of the things you're saying.

But actually, we do need to consider how we investigate fraud and our ability to investigate what is a volume crime. There were 3.2 million fraud offenses in the year ending March 24. So a lot of effect. And that's what we know about. There's going to be more. It's the biggest single crime in the country by a mile. It's about 40% of crimes. It's just under 40%.

What we've got to think about is the effective ways of investigating fraud. And actually, I think we're a lot of policing now and through the city of London, leadership and the national crime agency, including forces like the Met, we know we've got to actually start taking the fight to the fraudsters. This means tackling 70% of frauds have an overseas footprint, for example.

We need to start taking that fight to them, which is why there are several more high-profile investigations and operations that I can just briefly mention at some point. There's a few. Operation elaborate in 2022 was a platform called Iceboof, and this was a platform that allowed criminals to pretend to be a bank or whoever.

not who they purported to be would create fake noises of call centers behind them and effectively it was there to get a one-time passcode from a victim by purporting. I need that you're going to send you a code all they were doing and they were already in your account because your details have been sold and they were then using your this social engineering which is what these scammers do because they are very clever.

And then they elicit the information. So what we did with elaborate, we effectively got hold of the ice booth data, exploited it, and then we effectively took it down and you'd site down. You turn their own data back on them. And more than that, we found the administrator. He's now in custody for 13 years, which actually for a fall is quite a good sentence. And we're going off because that is a frustration, people. I mean, it's a frustration I have.

I've spent years with my name and face being defrauded. They've been BBC reports that have gone and said they know exactly who's doing it on many of the occasions that it's being used, but these people aren't arrested. And until we start arresting and punishing the scammers, we're not going to stop scams, are we? No. And I think it's not always quite as straightforward to identify who the person and where that fraud originates, because what you do get is exploitation of particularly young people to use their accounts to pass the money through. And that is then hidden.

That's muelling, isn't it? Muelling, yeah, and I think that it's more, it is exploitation. And what happens is they're hiding the trail. And that's why frauds are actually quite complicated to unravel and get that volume sort of detection that you're talking about, which is why. Things like Operation Lab, where over 200 people are arrested, Operation Stargry we did this year, that took out a website which had 40,000 fake websites. You would go to this site and you would buy a product from them, which allowed you to set up a fake website

you would trick people into clicking on the website through phishing, obviously, you know, pH, not FI. And what they would then do is be conned and tricked into leaving the personal details, which are then the subject of a later fraud. You know, we had thousands and thousands of password compromises, personal data, which is then sold. So we need to take that fight. And what we did with Stargree, we took them out the same way.

You're giving me a couple of good cases and it's wonderful to hear those, but there are still many of these people. I mean, we have had for a number of years the Internet is a Wild West. Yeah. Right. And many of this is cross different national jurisdictions.

there is sort of a scammer's charter where many of them are getting away with impunity. I mean, what percent of these criminals do you think you're actually putting away? That's a difficult question. It's going to be less than 10%. But just to go back to your earlier point you made there, those two operations I talked about involved international partners.

This wasn't just UK-based, this was FBI, this was Europe-hole. And when we'd made arrests in the style group, which I mentioned to you, they were making arrests in Canada, in Europe, it was coordinated. It wasn't exclusively UK. That's to your point, the extent of these frauds. They reach internationally. But we know that if you're living in London, so from a map perspective, you are being affected every day by these scams.

What percentage of these would you say are derived from big international organised crime groups and what percent are more local than on the doorstep? The National Crime Agency report says that 70% of the frauds are having an international link. So it's a huge volume. And that will often be outside of Europe as well. Are we finding any jurisdictions where it's more common, where we don't have good policing relations with them?

Well, I know for a fact that the NCA in the city of London actively working on how we work with nations that we think have that threat because you're absolutely right. We need to work. So we have sort of certain control mechanisms in certain countries and we've got good relationships. Other countries might be more difficult. So there's two things to think about here, I would suggest you've got the how we take the fight to the criminals.

But more importantly, how do we make sure that we're not all subject to frauds and scams? Scams are where we're tricked into doing something like a push payment fraud and send the, give the scam or the payment number.

We need to do more about understanding the social engineering that criminals use. When you get that text that says click here, your packages lost, you've got to pay a couple of pounds, sounds very innocuous. We need to... I mean, that was genius in that particular scam because the low value of people think, well, even if it's a scam, it's only 150, without people realizing they're buying your identity and your card details. The first step to the next... They're not buying it, rather. You're paying to give them your identity and your card details.

And the what the, the, um, Hey mum, you know, lost my phone. We have criminals who have sin farms who send out thousands of texts and it only takes a few. So the more we can do to make sure that we don't fall victim and fall foul. And one more point I would just make. We've also got to go over the fact that there is no shame in being a victim of fraud. The shame is in the criminals who conduct it, not those who fall foul of it.

So we have many people listening to this podcast and we have a whole range. There'll be people who've been scammed. There'll be people who worried they'll be scammed. And we also, because we are the nature of the podcast, we have many people out there who can spot a scam pretty easily and want to know, how do I help?

So, what would you say to those people who are listening to these parts, who are sophisticated individuals, and listen, anyone can fool victim of a scam. I could fool victim of a scam. But who are going, when they see an obvious scam online or somewhere, what should they do? How do they help you stop it? Well, the stopthink fraud website is a great place to go to. And you've got action fraud, of course, as well. So, there's different mechanisms to report this. Let us know about it.

I'm talking about people who haven't been scammed but know it's a scam. No, it's there. Go on to the stop thing for a website as well because let us know that there's a problem here. I suspect we probably do know about it because through action fraud, we'll get that methodology. I just spoke to it or policing will get that methodology.

But I do think we just need to be cautious. And there will be people who are perhaps more savvy and we recognize it more. And the problem with that is, of course, someone says that, this is where this perception of, well, I better not mention I've been a victim because they're going to think, no, we've got to get over that. This is no shame in it. I think we've all got to be a little bit more cautious. I've got home once and got one of those package things. And the company that said was actually I was expecting a parcel. Yeah. So it's very easy to get caught out.

I stopped myself the other day. There was a, I got a message from a bank that I have an account with all looked perfect. And then I suddenly thought, hold on, hold on. There's no reason for them to have contacted me. This transaction doesn't make any sense, but I was working at the time the text came in and it just said, click this.

And then I looked and realized and thought, OK, that link isn't real and this is a scam. And I stopped myself. It's very in our busy modern world where we are being thrown by so many different communications. It is very easy. And then unfortunately, once I've got your data, we've already talked in the program about the social engineering that goes on in that. It's a momentary lapse of concentration, isn't it?

Let me return to the beginning here. My view is we are critically under-resourced in the fight against fraud and scams, especially the more you talk about the international link and the millions of cases that we're seeing and the complete prevalence to scams on social media. Do you and your colleagues around the country have enough resources to deal with this plague of scams that we have in the country? You probably can't answer me politically, but I'm going to ask you anyway.

Actually, I don't think this is about armies of investigators necessarily. It's about being more precise in what we do to tackle it, because we need to fight back with the technology we have. There's three layers to this, how we take the fight to those that are operating these scams. Three minutes, yeah.

The criminals themselves through the technology. I almost worry that calling them scams. No, no. They're criminals. Absolutely. They're criminals unequivocally. The second bit is how industry works. We're the lines of defense. So banking industry do a lot of work. There's a voluntary charter with tech companies to have a responsibility to also intercede and take these things down before they reach us. But they're crap. Well,

Does it need more work? Yeah, of course it does. I mean, I'm going to say, I probably shouldn't say that word on the podcast, but I'm going to stick with anyway. They are crap. They are the oxygen of scammers out there. They allow them in. They give them publicity. They take money. They're paid to promote these scammers. And we need these tech firms to deny scammers the oxygen of publicity and the ability to interact and contact with individuals. And it is a disgrace at how long it's taking

to get any form of regulation in place. And I'm still scared the online safety bill won't be enough. Anyway, I shouldn't interrupt. You carry on. But also the banking industry has got much more sophisticated. Banking industry is doing banking industry. I don't see the culprits here. Funnily enough, they're the ones who have to pay out. The technical companies who advertise these scams don't have to pay out, which seems there's a level of lack of justice in that for me, but you don't think those

No, but banking certainly that we work really closely and the city, again, have London do a lot of work with UK finance and they're actually a lot more sophisticated. The third layer are us individuals, not falling foul of these criminals. When we receive something where we need to be more cautious, don't accept it on face value.

Does it mean it might take a little bit longer to deal with whatever's in front of you? Yes, but actually for the sake of a let's click directly to the website rather than clicking the link. Don't click the link. If there's none, this is phone call. You know what, send me something in the post. I'm not taking the phone call now. There are ways that we can do now. It does interfere a little bit with our daily lives. I suppose it does in all honesty, but actually, interestingly, the figures around fraud up until March this year, there has been a 10% reduction in

For all, that's got to be a combination of those three things. Listen, I very much appreciate your time coming in. I wish the police more strength in order to be able to crack down on the epidemic that we have in this country. I think you're being political by saying that you have enough resources to do it because you have to do that in your job. It doesn't look to me if we're only got conviction rates of less than 10%, substantial less than 10%, that we have enough resources being focused on how we crack down on this in the country. I wish you had a few more arms under your helmet.

We've got to get out the way we do our job much more effective with the resources that we've got and then we'll have some vent into this. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you.

In this podcast, we talked about a number of different companies. We asked them for their statements and here are their responses to what has been said. Well, please, this complaint has been thoroughly investigated and our customer has chosen to exercise their right to refer the matter to the financial ombudsman service. We will await their adjudication in due course. It would be inappropriate for us to comment further at this stage.

Revolut, we are very sorry to hear about any instance where our customers are targeted by ruthless and highly sophisticated criminals. Revolut works hard and invests heavily to protect our customers as best we can through our fraud prevention technologies, analyzing over half a billion transactions a month. We urge our customers to avoid so-called investment opportunities on social media platforms and ensure they undertake extensive due diligence to establish the legitimacy of any opportunities prior to making investment decisions.

A virgin media spokesperson said, we take fraud incredibly seriously, blocking known scam numbers and investigating suspected scam calls whenever they're reported to us. We offer a wide range of features including call display and anonymous call rejection, which help reduce incoming calls from withheld numbers.

Customers may wish to register with the telephone preference service to opt out of unsolicited sales and marketing calls and can find more advice on how to stay safe from fraud on our website. We also approached the governments and a Department for Culture, Media and Sports spokesperson said, the government is continuing the work of the online advertising task force, an industry-led forum bringing together leaders from across the advertising sector to tackle illegal advertising and increase protections for consumers.

We will continue to monitor the current frameworks in place to determine if further legislation is needed.

And if you've enjoyed this, why not subscribe to the regular weekly Martin Lewis podcast. We put out a new podcast every Thursday and you never know your pockets might just be pleased with you.

Every morning, Rick and I wake up with you on Five Life Breakfast. Five Life Breakfast with us too? I am doing a lot of trucking out. I'm even considering getting a scam. I'm fucking out of time. Anyway. No causes or mobile skips, just use that. That is true. Five Life Breakfast. With Rachel Burden and Rick Edwards.

Things to be proud of in the UK. Alan and Cookham says, queuing. We are excellent at this. Disciplined. Ordly. Unquestioning. We will sit in traffic jams for ages without even tooting. Wow. Then he also says, maybe that's because we're not moving on our roads. We'll be physically exhausted by far. Five live breakfasts. There's some weekdays from six on BBC Sounds.