And isn’t it even nicer when you get a phone call or better still a visitor to your door? There is just nothing better than hearing a lovely person tell you how you have inherited £5,000 in a secret account that Uncle Rodger left for you in his will and to retrieve it you should send your card details to a random company you have never heard of in your life.
Sound familiar?
Well thousands of us are caught out by these scams in the UK each year. In fact according to KPMG , the number of fraud cases passing through the UK courts set a 21-year record in the first six months during this year.
Charges of serious fraud, where more than £100,000 is embezzled, totalled 163 in the first half of this year, with a combined value of £636 million.
Hitesh Patel, a partner at KPMG Forensic, said, “These figures are bad, but the worst is yet to come. It will be a number of years before the impact of the recession fully feeds through into the fraud statistic.
“The economic crisis takes some of the blame. Hard times mean more people driven to fraud by personal pressures, and more investors willing to believe in cooked up investment schemes.”
The current recession is putting people in difficult situations as they try to scrape together money in order to live. Many people are also delving into their life savings and investing in ‘quick cash fix’ solutions to make ends meet.
Most of these money solutions are scams which many people fail to recognise until after the money has gone from the account and the fake company has disappeared off the face of the earth.
To make sure that you don’t fall into the same trap as some of these poor creatures, we at LifeInsure.co.uk have found the top ten worst scams that scoured the streets and towns of Britain so you can be clued up the next time you get a dodgy letter, phone call or knock on your door.
1.Bogus Holiday Clubs
The Dream
These cheeky little scams work while a consumer is away on holiday at home or in the UK. Consumers are approached by fake sales people and tempt them to coming to a presentation with a free holiday. Once at the presentation they are pressured into signing up to a holiday club offering cheap holiday all over the world staying in world class accommodation.
The Reality
The dates or destination are not guaranteed and holidays are not often available when and where wanted.
Victims who have signed up later find out that their supposed ‘free’ holiday isn’t actually free at all and they must pay for their flights and other extras. The dates are not flexible either and they have to settle with a place they don’t want to go to at a time that doesn’t suit them.
Facts
Yearly cost to the public: £1.17bn
Number of victims: 400,000
Average loss per victim: £3,030
Victim Profile: 78 per cent are aged between 35 and 64
Read More...
[ view entry ] ( 1 view ) | permalink |
( 2.9 / 53 )
Calendar
