Young Brits are most likely to get scammed, with many victims losing huge sums of money to online shopping scams, pyramid schemes and rental fraud, a new report found.
New research from Which? shows that there were a total of 448,838 fraud reports lodged with Action Fraud between November 2020 and December 2021 as more than £1.9bn ($2.5bn) was lost to fraud.
The consumer group found that those aged between 20 and 39 were more prone to report being scammed, and accounted for two in five (39%) of all reports.
Which? identified 12 emerging fraud threats including online shopping scams, cryptocurrency scams, pyramid schemes and rental fraud.
Three quarters (74%) of rental fraud cases were reported by young people. Rental fraud is where victims are tricked into paying upfront fees to secure homes by fake landlords and letting agents.
Cryptocurrency scams rose 34% in the period. Action Fraud said it received 9,458 reports referring to crypto last year, with total losses of £204.5m — an average of £21,620 per report.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) does not regulate cryptocurrencies.
Those aged between 20 and 39 were also more likely to report pyramid or Ponzi schemes, with 57% of reports filed by young people. Over half (55%) of online shopping scams victimised this age group.
“Fraudsters don’t discriminate when it comes to scams and everyone is susceptible to these growing numbers of crimes, with many young victims…
