The Crime Prevention Website

I’ve just got off the phone with the fraud investigators for La Redoute, a mail order catalogue, which my wife used once about 10 years ago.  Back in January we received a bill for about £500 for some items of clothing we had neither ordered nor received!  The bill was in the name of Mrs Something Wicks.

I rang the company and explained that nobody by the name of Wicks had ever lived at our address and that clearly they had been the victims of a fraud.  The lady took my details and said that someone from their fraud department would get in touch.

Today, some twelve weeks after the event, I got a call from their fraud investigators telling me that I shouldn’t worry, there would be no black mark on my address (for not paying a bill) and that their investigation had been completed.

I mentioned who I was and we had a little chat.  It seems that my address was lifted off the electoral role and a credit check was done on it; revealing the fact that we have a good credit record.  They then signed up to Le Redoute using a false name and date of birth and placed an order – so simple!  The order (I think there was more than one order) was delivered to a postcode address close to mine, an address that has since been vacated by the criminals (of course).

I mentioned that their investigation had taken quite some time to resolve and she admitted that she had piles of them on her desk!

What I find particularly interesting is that absolutely none of these frauds are reported to the authorities and La Redoute is no different from any other mail catalogue in that respect.

So my message to you is this.  When politicians tell you that crime’s been going down take that statement with a pinch of salt.  Yes, property crimes like burglary and theft of cars and so on, have been falling, which is great news, but ‘dark crimes’, such as fraud is on a steady rise and organisations like The National Fraud Authority (Action Fraud) will only get to know about a few of them.

I shall now patiently await the next bill for something I haven’t ordered!

 

Action Fraud http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/

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