Levels of card fraud in UK stable while overall fraud soars – ONS

Levels of card fraud in the UK remained stable from 2012-2013, with 4.9% of card users becoming victims last year, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The figure represented an increase of just 0.3% on 2012, a hike which the ONS said was not "statistically significant".

However, the ONS figures also showed that according to data collected by the police and Action Fraud, 207,252 fraud offences were recorded in the year ending December 2013, representing a 25% increase on 2012 and 6% of the total crimes recorded.

There were also 309,880 reports of fraud to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau from industry bodies, 87% of which came from the banking industry.
The ONS warned that the fraud figures should be taken with a pinch of salt.

A spokesperson said: "The numbers should be interpreted with caution. It is unclear the extent to which this reflects a genuine increase in such crimes or whether the move to the centralised recording of such offences has led to improved counting of fraud offences.

"In addition, fraud data are also collected from industry bodies by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB).

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"In the year to December 2013, there were 309,880 reports of fraud to the NFIB from industry bodies, the vast majority of which were related to banking and credit industry fraud.

"It is possible that there may be some double counting between these two data sources."

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