Fraudsters seized more than £1bn in 2016, the highest value since 2011—and that’s only counting cases worth £100,000 or more that reached the UK courts.
KPMG Forensic revealed the astonishing figures this week, attributing the rise to a resurgence in “super cases”. More than £900m derives from just seven “super cases” worth more than £50m each.
While the volume of alleged fraud dropped by nearly a third from 310 to 220, the value rose more than 55% on 2015’s £732m. KPMG’s research found the average value of fraud has more than doubled to £5.2m from £2.4m.
Further breakdown of the figures shows that cyber fraud rose by more than 1200%, fraud against businesses has risen seven-fold and the most common type of fraud is an inside job committed by employees and management. One cybercrime, where fraudsters cold-called bank customers, brought in a haul of £113m.
Hitesh N Patel, UK forensic partner at KPMG, said: “We can expect more of these super frauds as challenging economic circumstances place pressures on businesses and individuals and as technology becomes more sophisticated.”
Last week, the Crime Survey for England and Wales revealed an estimated 3.6 million cases of fraud and two million computer misuse offences in the past year. Cybercrimes were included for the first time.
