Online fraud: victim blaming and the emotional price of falling for a scam
Mary Barker’s life as she knew it came to an end when fraudsters stole £70,000 from her pension pot. On her retirement, she thought she had invested the money in a bond from a well-known financial firm. However, criminals had cloned its website and paperwork and duped her into transferring half of her savings to a private bank account. Her bank refused to refund her, claiming she had been negligent.
The scam has left her in financial straits but far worse has been the emotional impact. She told Guardian Money: “I get so depressed at times, I don’t know how I can carry on. I’m dreading the future.”
Online fraud has almost doubled during the coronavirus pandemic, with more than£750m lost to scammers during the first half of 2021. According to a report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, it can have “permanent and life-changing consequences” for those affected.
Yet, it concludes: “Fraud continues to be treated as a low-priority crime, a victimless crime, or a crime that doesn’t cause the harm recognised in other types of crime.”
The business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, was criticised earlier this month for appearing to dismiss the impact of soaring financial fraud. Defending Boris Johnson’s exclusion of scams when claiming falling crime rates, he spoke of “crime that people experience in their day-to-day lives … in terms of burglary, in terms of physical injury, has gone down”.
It provoked an angry response from victims whose lives have been wrecked.
Clara Bennett, a 33-year-old NHS worker who was scammed out of her £20,000 wedding savings, says the public’s perception that victims are gullible, greedy or elderly conceals the changing nature of scams. “It allows banks to evade accountability
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