Chief Inspector Chris Beechey said that the police had received reports of 50 incidents between August 2020 and April and that that figure would have risen significantly in the past three months.
‘There will also be lots of cases of scams which have not been reported to the police and so in terms of the total, we are talking about a lot of money, which will be well over £400,000,’ he said.
‘But it is not always the value that is important. Individual circumstances mean that a smaller loss of money could have a greater impact as some people have more to lose. I have seen people’s whole livelihoods taken away through scams and the emotional impact it has on them can be severe,’ he added.
Chief Insp Beechey said that while there had been no significant difference in the number of scams throughout the pandemic, Covid had given fraudsters a new ‘back story’ with which to target Islanders.
‘We have seen scams relating to PPE and testing kits. A lot of the scams are related to current events which drive the narrative of the scam and we often see an injection of a particular type of scam, depending on what is going on,’ he said.
He added that fraudsters tended to focus on vulnerable people, in particular the elderly, who can be more susceptible.
‘We often see the elderly targeted through a wide range of scams, from lottery scams to unclaimed inheritance scams. Lots of them pretend to be from professional institutes and they can come in the form of a letter, text message or phone call,’ he said.
‘Well-funded organised criminals are often behind these scams. These people are smart and the complexity of how they try to reach you is always increasing. The idea is to draw your attention in and manipulate you or convince you to do something so that they can obtain your personal information.’
Chief Insp Beechey said that fraudsters were always coming up with new ways to manipulate people.
He said: ‘There is the possibility that some types of scams and frauds will die out as we progress with technology and people become more savvy and aware. However, whenever one door closes another opens and this is always a battle we will be fighting.
‘I urge Islanders to never give out their personal information and if you are worried about the legitimacy of someone pretending to be from somewhere like your bank then break communication with them and go research them before making any decision on what to do.’
