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...

This police blog continues, Read More...

• 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...

This police blog continues, Read More...

I feel that I must begin by acknowledging that I have been retired from Policing 16 years this month. I am out of touch. Things have changed, oh how they have changed. However that does not automatically invalidate my thoughts and concerns.

For a variety of reasons I have turned my attention recently to Mutual Aid. For those that are not familiar with it, basically, when a major event, such as the recent Wedding of Prince Harry, takes place and the local Force has insufficient resources they can draw in Police Officers from a nearby Force to bolster their numbers. The deployment of officers from Force A to assist, and be under the operational control of, Force B is known as Mutual Aid. Historically it has been used to send reinforcements for events such as The Miners’ Strike, Greenham Common and latterly ‘Fracking’ demonstrations, the visit of the Trump and the Royal Wedding. All large-scale, but relatively uncommon, events.  The turning point for me was 2011 when the Metropolitan Police called for...

This police blog continues, Read More...

On August 3rd 2018, Kaylsey Smithen was convicted of the manslaughter of his 46yr old mother, Janice, which took place in Birmingham more than six years earlier. This short post is a little bit of speculation on my part, based only on media reports of the legal process, but which seeks to outline why such a delay can occur and challenge again assumptions that professionals might make about serious mental illness being a barrier to criminal prosecution.

You may remember this case if you follow me on Twitter: at the start of 2018, Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Trust apologised to Mrs Smithen’s family for the standard of care he received prior to her killing. There was some debate arising from the Safeguarding Adults Review about whether the police should have been called to a Mental Health Act assessment and / or whether the police were at fault.

Following his arrest for murder in 2012, shortly after his mother’s body was discovered by the police, he was detained under the Mental Health Act (MHA), having been...

This police blog continues, Read More...

The recent conclusion of an inquest in to the death in 2016 of Mr Luke Leggatt in Canterbury has given rise to a social media debate amongst police officers about the East Kent Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s reaction to Coroner’s process. Mr Leggatt had been taken to the hospital by his brother after taking cocaine and having resisted assessment or any treatment for this, had left the hospital. The police were not called when he walked out and he  tragically died of a heart attack, caused by a fatal level of cocaine toxicity.  Faced with an obvious degree of criticism, the East Kent Hospitals spokesperson announced that they have changed their policy on patients who walk out of A&E to make sure that every such patient is subject to a ‘safeguarding call’ to the police irrespective of any assessment of ongoing risk to that person.

Job done – over to the police.  Settles everything, doesn’t it?  I have at least few dozen questions and observations about this, not least because of how it appears to have been...

This police blog continues, Read More...