{"id":7591,"date":"2025-03-08T15:00:29","date_gmt":"2025-03-08T15:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newmoneyreview.com\/?p=7591"},"modified":"2025-05-19T16:36:28","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T16:36:28","slug":"how-the-uk-became-fraudster-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newmoneyreview.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/08\/how-the-uk-became-fraudster-heaven\/","title":{"rendered":"How the UK became fraudster heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"

The UK prides itself in being open for firms to set up business. It takes only \u00a312\u2014and 15-20 minutes\u2014to create a new company online.<\/p>\n

But the laxity of the country\u2019s system for new company formations has made the UK a goldmine for scammers. And the problem is getting worse: fraud, much of it digital, now accounts for over 40 per cent of all recorded crime in England and Wales.<\/p>\n

AI and cryptocurrency are making the scammers\u2019 lives even easier\u2014and boosting their return on investment.<\/p>\n

In the latest episode of Unseen Money<\/a>, Timur Yunusov and I discuss a recent Financial Times article<\/a> about a London-based fraud victim, Livia Giuggioli Firth, who was conned by scammers into sending \u00a3325k from her company\u2019s bank account.<\/p>\n

Instead of asking for compensation from her own bank for being a victim of an authorised push payment fraud<\/a>, Ms. Giuggioli Firth took the unusual step of suing the scammers\u2019 bank in court. This forced the disclosure of the names if not of the individual scammers, but of the network of companies they used to launder the stolen money.<\/p>\n

The court case unveiled some of the principal weaknesses in the UK\u2019s system for deterring and catching fraudsters.<\/p>\n

Listen to the podcast<\/a> to hear Timur and me discuss:<\/p>\n