Romance Fraud (594A/22)
Request
1: Reported cases of “romance fraud” or “romance scam” for the past five available years up until the most recent data, broken down by year (January – December)
If possible, please can you break down each individual report, including:
Q1A: Details of the complaint – how they were contacted (hinge, Facebook, WhatsApp etc), how long they interacted for, location of the alleged offender etc.
Q1B: Complainant’s demographic details – age, gender, ethnicity, location
Q1C: Any losses incurred – amount of money, currency (cryptocurrencies included), how it was paid
Response
Please find enclosed our response:
In relation to Q1:
For the years 2017 and 2018: Information not available in a retrievable format.
For the years 2019 to Feb 2022 please find the data enclosed. (Please note that we are unable to present this on an excel spreadsheet as requested).
2019
Total reports – 169
Total loss – £1,291,948.28
2020
Total reports – 266
Total loss – £4,645,989.71
2021
Total reports – 344
Total loss – £2,831,656.94
2022 to Feb 2022
Total reports – 43
Total loss – £341,773.64
Q1A: Details of the complaint – how they were contacted (hinge, Facebook, WhatsApp etc), how long they interacted for, location of the alleged offender etc.
Q1B: Complainant’s demographic details – age, gender, ethnicity, location
Q1C: Any losses incurred – amount of money, currency (cryptocurrencies included), how it was paid
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).
We are able to provide the age ranges as above, however to retrieve:
The ethnicity
How contacted
Location of victim
How monies were paid (including individual payments)
would require a manual search of each individual record and this would exceed the cost.
Although excess cost removes the force’s obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill I have supplied information above, relative to your request, retrieved before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded. I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of the request.
Attachments
Include attachments here