The UK government has pledged to end the “text-scam misery” by enacting a number of new regulations to combat fraud.
The National Crime Agency and the City of London Police will lead the new National Fraud Squad, which will have 400 new positions, according to the plans, which will be presented to Parliament on Wednesday.
A state-of-the-art reporting centre that will be operational by the end of the year has also received a £30 million investment commitment from the government.
Other measures include a ban on cold calls for financial products and the outlawing of “Sim farms,” technological tools that enable scammers to send texts to thousands of people simultaneously.
According to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, fraud now makes up over 40% of all crimes. We spend almost £7 billion a year on it, and we are aware that the money goes to funding terrorism and organised crime. Additionally, new technologies make it simpler to pull off these scams and more challenging to stop them. It’s time to confront scammers and fraudsters and put an end to crimes that can instantly destroy lives and livelihoods.
Opposition leaders dismissed the proposals as being too late and too little.
The scale of the problem is not adequately addressed by this plan, according to shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper.
“All the home secretary has done is rebrand the current national teams and issue a new announcement regarding Action Fraud’s replacement.
