As Indukumar Patel lay on his deathbed, his family told him a lie. They whispered to the 87-year-old that the £40,000 he’d lost to scammers had been recovered.
In truth the money was still missing, but the fib was a last loving gesture for a man who had spent his final 12 months wracked with the anguish of having been duped by a fraudster and fighting for fair treatment from his bank, Lloyds.
On Sunday, Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, said that fraud and online scams were not problems that “people experience in their daily lives”. In doing so he perpetuates a prejudice that has allowed these crimes to grow into an epidemic.
The Crime Survey from England and Wales for the year to September
