The answer is not much except your money is probably gone for good.

1. The Police Response

The Police are short of money. Unfortunately this has meant that as fraud and cyber-crime increase the numbers of specialist cyber-crime investigators are being cut. North Wales and Suffolk police have none but rely on adjoining forces and non specialist officers.

Many bank frauds reported to the police are never seen by a living person. Over 800,000 such frauds were registered over the last three years. However of these over half were solely assessed by the police computer algorithm. The computers look for patterns and if enough people are touched by the same fraud they may be referred to a person for investigation. Otherwise nothing is done unless the fraud is unusually large. Unfortunately even low sums can have life changing effects on the victim.

Some £500 million was lost to fraud in the first six months of 2018. Criminals are becoming increasingly more sophisticated. Of this £145 million was where someone sends money to a criminal believing they are taking instructions from their bank or the police.

2. The Bank Response

Is often not what the victim wants. If the fraud is detected quickly and the recipient bank can freeze the funds the victim should get their money back. However often funds can be moved through ten accounts in ten minutes . The chances of being fast enough to freeze the funds is fairly remote.

A bank that receives the funds will often refuse to speak to the victim if they are not a customer which is not helpful.

The police believe that bank’s should take more care regarding opening accounts . Those used for fraud are often opened with fraudulent papers.

3. Current Frauds

These include emails saying there is a problem with your direct debit for your TV Licence and must pay immediately to them

Another is using parking meters in London to swallow bank cards that can be retrieved and misused by the fraudster.

Have you sat back and counted where you are exposed to hackers and fraudsters? You would be surprised how many they are. Let us guide you through all this.