The number of people falling victim to fraud is on the rise
WORDS: TRACY GAYTON. MAIN PHOTO (POSED BY MODEL): GETTY, THE SUN/NEWS LICENSING
Whether it’s a phone call from your ‘bank’ asking you to transfer funds, or an email from a ‘friend’ asking for money, we’ve all become a lot savvier about identifying a scam.
But in June last year, Citizens Advice warned that more than three quarters of UK adults had been targeted by a scam in 2022 – a 14% increase compared with 2021. And in the first half of 2022 alone, criminals stole a total of £609.8 million. With scammers seemingly upping their game, coming up with even more convincing ways to deceive us, we speak to two women about their experiences with fraudsters…
‘We felt so foolish’
Angie Brigden, 58, lives in Kent with her husband Gary.
As my husband Gary and I looked out into the garden, we discussed our big plans. ‘We can extend right the way along here,’ Gary said. It was 2017 and we had lived in our three-bedroom semi for 32 years. Our sons, 27 and 18, had grown up so Gary and I wanted to treat ourselves to a bigger kitchen and dining room. We found a builder on a website called Rated People. Contemporary Home Improvements (CHI), seemed like a legitimate business and Gary and I were impressed by the pictures on their website. Their head office address was in Camden, they belonged to the Federation Of Master Builders and they were registered with Companies House. They provided us with third party liability insurance policy details too, at my request. Their salesman, Scott, gave us a quote for just under £30,000. It was expensive but we gave CHI an £8,000 deposit. Scott advised us to pay £200 on our credit card to protect ourselves, and the rest of the £8,000 by bank transfer. CHI were due to work in September but from late August, I couldn’t get hold of them. Then we received a phone call from CHI’s architect, stating that the company had gone bust, and was in the hands of an insolvency practitioner. As a creditor, we could register a claim, but might not get any of our cash back.
Gary and I felt so foolish and ashamed. ‘How have we been so stupid?’ I cried. But we hadn’t. We’d done all of the right checks on the company and had asked all of the right questions. Meanwhile, Trading Standards began investigating – later handing the investigation to the Met Police. Eventually, in October 2021, Brian Tutton, 62, and Scott Baker, 49, were convicted of conspiracy to defraud and jailed for seven years and four years respectively. It turns out that customers across London, including disabled people needing their h
