Fraud - who is responsible for prosecutions?

usignuolo

I was watching a consumer affairs show on tv last night and there were two cases that caught my eye. One was a man who had handed over a substantial deposit to a builder for building work, to lay new drains. He dug up the existing drains, broken them and then scarpered with the money basically. Turned out he had done this sort of thing leaving a trail of debt and distraught home owners behind him.

Separately someone else had paid for goods on the internet and it turned out to be a scam, the perpetrators operating the scam out of successive addresses.

The victims approached the CAB, police and their banks for help and were told in each case that it was nothing to do with them as they did not get involved in fraud cases.

It got me wondering how does anyone ever get prosecuted for fraud?

HTAFC112

Your bank is not responsible for a payment in which you have given money to an individual for a service/goods. If you are going to hand your money directly to another person then you are not covered, so it is up to you to make sure you know who you are giving your money to.

If you pay using your debit or credit card or Paypal then your bank or paypal would resolve it.

Where money has been given to an unscrupulous individual, it becomes a legal matter. You would need to report this to the police. Generally these people are untraceable and the police may require a couple of years and a handful of complaints about the individual before it goes to court, and often you won't see a penny because it's been laundered.

Distressing and painful situation, granted. This is why the Police have commissioned Action Fraud, to provide support and advice for such affected victims.

bazster

The police decided some years ago that fraud is no longer a crime.

keystone

Case A is a police matter as the suspect is identifiable and arrestable.

Case B is for Action Fraud to look at.

As usual poor research on behalf of the programme maker leads to misleading information being given out.

Also it is not for the police to decide what is and what isn't a crime. Thats Parliament's job.

Cheers

roger196

Whilst parliament passes the legislation, the local police decide on a policy of whether to investigate certain crimes or not. There are more crimes than they have the resources to investigate them all. So an allocation of resources has to be made. They are also aware of the need to massage crime statistics. Thus a crime with a high chance of successful investigation boosts their clean up rate. Hence the liking for fixed penalty notices which have a 100% success rate.

The crown prosecution service decide whether there is sufficient evidence to make a prosecution likely to be succesful and whether it is in the public interest to prosecute.

usignuolo

You are right that there seem to be an awful lot of illegal activities which the police have decided as a matter of policy not to investigate.