• Action Fraud is launching an awareness campaign with support from retailers to combat gift card fraud.
   
• Between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2018, 11,329 reports of fraud involving iTunes gift cards were made to Action Fraud.
   
• In the same period, £6,561,380 was lost to this type of fraud, with the average person losing £579. 

A not so wonderful gift to receive

Action Fraud is warning the public to #StayTunedToFraud as fraudsters are contacting victims, claiming to be from well-known organisations including Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC). Fraudsters are then tricking victims into making payments using iTunes gift cards. 

Fraudsters are using online store gift cards to collect money from victims because they can be easily redeemed and sold on. The fraudsters don’t need the physical card to redeem the value and will instead use tactics to persuade victims to purchase gift cards in large amounts and read out the serial code on the back over...

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I shall probably be called Racist by people who don’t really get it, but, hey, I don’t care. Some things are more important than that. I shall stick my head, with my tin foil helmet, above the parapet and proffer my opinions.

During my working life I have worked the streets of Brent and Southall, both areas with a very high percentage of immigrants. I tried to avoid South London, even Cab Drivers don’t want to go there, but occasionally I was sent to Brixton to give them a hand with some disorder. I do know a bitabout violence and racial tensions.

The Home Office, and the Police Service have to grasp the nettle (I’d better not say bite the bullet) and do a bit of serious racial profiling (waits for shocked gasps and glasses of Prosecco being dropped). No, I absolutely mean it.

There are people out there, and you all know the sort of person I mean, who delight in calling the Police “Racist”. We were branded “Institutionally Racist” and it has stuck, folk love to kick the Police Service with it.

If...

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I wrote an op-ed this month that was published by the Hartford Courant.

Insight: I See What Heroin Does. Let People Shoot Up Safely

Included was a checklist:

5 Things to Know About Heroin Addiction

I read an article a few days later that said that when called an “overdose prevention site,” as opposed to a “safe injection site” people were much more likely to support the concept.

Support increases when opioid ‘safe consumption sites’ called ‘overdose prevention sites’

For me the bottom line is harm reduction.  We may not be able to stop people from using heroin, we can at least mitigate some of the harmful effects of it.  Safe Injection Sites/Overdose Prevention Sites have been proven to keep people alive and get some of them into treatment.  We can help prevent the spread of disease and keep our streets cleaner.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and The Pensions Regulator (TPR) are urging the public to be vigilant when receiving unsolicited offers about their pensions and to check who they are dealing with.

The FCA and TPR have launched a joint TV advertising campaign to raise awareness of pension scams and the most common tactics used by fraudsters. 

This comes after figures show that a total of 253 victims reported to Action Fraud that they had lost more than £23 million to pension scammers in 2017, which equates to an average loss of £91,000 per victim.

Highly sophisticated scammers lure people into transferring their pensions into fraudulent schemes. Victims of pension scams can lose their life savings, and be left facing retirement with limited income. 

The FCA and TPR are calling the public’s attention to the tactics used by pensions scammers. One of the most common tactics is to offer a ‘free pension review’.

Cold calling is currently by far the most common method used to...

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• Action Fraud is warning the public about fraudsters advertising ‘get rich quick’ investments to scam people out of money.
   
• The latest statistics from Action Fraud show that in June and July, victims reported losing £2,059,501.29 to cryptocurrency scams – an average of £10,095.59 per person.
   
• In the same period, 203 reports of this type of fraud were made to Action Fraud.

How is this happening?

Fraudsters are cold calling victims and using social media platforms to advertise ‘get rich quick’ investments in mining and trading in cryptocurrencies.

Fraudsters will convince victims to sign up to cryptocurrency investment websites and to part with their personal details such as credit card details and driving licences to open a trading account. The victim will then make an initial minimum deposit, after which the fraudster will call them to persuade them to invest again in order to achieve a greater profit. 

In some cases, victims have realised that they have been...

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