Sign my petition to abolish Action Fraud at change.org. Please share it with as many people as possible.
I'm making it my personal mission to get these people fired.
For the past couple of years, victims of fraud have been complaining that when they call the police, nothing is done. If you are at home, and someone calls and pretends to be your bank, and you get fooled and end up giving away money, or if someone somehow hacks into an email, and manages to get money from an account that way, if you call the police, this part of the police that deals with fraud, actually it's been outsourced to a third-party company called Concentrix, and they run this call centre in Girrock.
There are complaints from former employees online, who talk about how it's run by very young people, how the call centre is manned by school leavers with no work experience, and talking about the different ways that victims are being failed because of how the call centre is run. That's why I've gone for the job. I got the job, and so I start training today, and it will be really crucial to see what the training is like.
Training for recruits at Action Fraud at taken by Michael Rogers, the City of London police training manager. He quickly made his views clear on how well he thinks the police deal with fraud reports, and explained that when victims report crimes, they do not realise their cases are very unlikely to be passed on to actual police officers.
"See when it comes to the police, you'll find that they do absolutely everything in their power to avoid doing work. They're the most useless bunch of people, and that's me being totally honest with you. See when it comes to fraud in particular because they don't understand it they will literally hand people over a leaflet and say contact Action Fraud knowing that all we can do for people is take a report and we can't do anything else."
Fraud now makes up more than a third of all crimes in England and Wales. Victims often call Action Fraud in distress, in some cases having lost their life savings. They do not know that staff are making quick decisions as to whether their cases should be dealt with as crimes, or filed as less serious information reports, which are almost never looked at again.
Mr Rogers said we should never tell victims about this system. "People don't know that, right, so when somebody phones up to get a report, we don't tell them that we're taking a crime or an information report, we just tell them we're taking a fraud report for them. Because could you imagine sitting there on the phone and going 'Sorry I know that you've been passed on to me for a crime reference number, but I cannot give you that, I can only give you a report for an information report'? And then they say to you, 'Well what's the difference between the two?' And then you turn round and say 'Well if it's a crime report, somebody's going to look at it and try and investigate for you, but because it's an information report, nothing's going to happen with it.' "
As training progressed, it emerged that even crime reports are often never looked at again. A computer scoring system analyses the reports and only those most likely to lead to a suspect being caught is sent on to be reviewed by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau. Victims have to have detailed information about the fraudsters, such as their real names, and car registration plate numbers, to have a realistic chance of their cases being looked at. This is also hidden from victims.
"Never disclose that there's a scoring system. That has only been disclosed to us through NFIB so that you guys know why reports will go through and get investigated and why some won't. Could you imagine having that conversation with somebody on the phone where you say 'Yeah that's not going to be one of the ones that going to score high enough so you're kind if wasting your time.' You're going to be dealing with probably no report but a massive complaint as to who are you to decide that I'm not going to get that report."
Staff turnover at Action Fraud is very high, and those who've been hired include teenagers, some as young as 16. Employees ridicule victims and took little interest in their cases while on calls.
Reporter: "I thought he was sleeping, but he's not?"
Call centre worker: "Ah no, I fall asleep, honestly."
"On calls?"
"Not like [fully asleep]. I'll close my eyes and then they'll still say the same thing again because it's so repetitive sometimes."
"When they phone up and they say I received a phone call, I'm like that - it's either going to be a BT scam from abroad, a law enforcement phone call or HMRC, and you already know how it's going to turn out and how it's going to be so you kind of just like..."
"It looks like he's sleeping but he's actually just got his head in his hands."
"Aye. It happens."
One of the senior staff members at Action Fraud is Ross Doherty. He is one of the managers responsible for the staff and the call centre. He'll frequently use his social media. In one of his tweets, from May 2018, he wrote that he was stuck in work dealing with morons until eight. He has also boasted of being drunk during a shift, and tweeted 'Fuck fraud. Stop calling us and let me go home early'.
While training for new recruits is written by the Home Office, and staff have to pass an Action Fraud sign-off test, Mr Rogers missed out huge chunks of the material, telling us he was simplifying it to the most basic level. And before the test, he fed us the answers.
In April, a major watchdog report condemned the police for having a defeatist culture when it comes to investigating fraud. After seeing our undercover footage, politicians and campaigners said the need for change is now urgent.
