The UK government will prohibit telemarketing calls for financial products, including insurance and cryptocurrencies, to combat fraud. It also plans to introduce laws to reimburse victims of authorized crypto fraud and work with Ofcom to prevent phone number “spoofing.“
The government of the United Kingdom announced its new fraud strategy and pledged 400 new positions to modernize its approach to intelligence-led policing.
The government will collaborate with the telecoms regulator, the Office of Communications, also known as Ofcom, to implement new technology to combat phone number “spoofing,” thereby preventing fraudsters from impersonating legitimate U.K. phone numbers.
According to Bloomberg, wire fraud is now the most prevalent crime in the United Kingdom, affecting one in fifteen individuals. To ensure that more victims of fraud receive their money back, the government intends to enact legislation mandating that financial institutions reimburse victims of authorized fraud.
A report published by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Observer on January 29 indicates that organized crime syndicates use the United Kingdom as their operational base due to the region’s “lax regulations.”
The minimum cost to register a company in the United Kingdom is 12 British pounds ($14.85). It does not require identification, writing, and acquiring phony credibility simply for fraudulent businesses.
The British government has been attempting to restrict cryptocurrency businesses operating in the region. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) of the United Kingdom mandated that all companies engaged in crypto asset activity register with it under the Financial Services and Markets Act regulations for the digital assets market.
However, the FCA has adopted a stringent approvals policy, resulting in the operation of several unregistered crypto-related businesses. The regulator is attempting to strike a compromise between providing investors with a secure environment and encouraging innovation in the industry.
According to a statement by U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, con artists “ruin lives in seconds by deceiving people in the most despicable ways to line their pockets.” He vowed to pursue these con artists wherever they attempted to conceal.
The government also promised to end “SIM farms” and other methods commonly used by con artists to reach thousands of individuals simultaneously. To prevent these technologies from falling into the clutches of criminals, we will also examine the use of mass-texting services.
