Fraud (499A/22)
Request
Under the Freedom of Information Act I would like to ask for information on the number of fraud cases reported to your force. I am looking for data on activity undertaken between January 1st 2021 and December 31st 2021 (inclusive).
Could you please share the following:
1. How many cases of fraud were reported to you in 2021 (please break down by category*)?
*Specified Categories:
a) Account takeover
b) Advance fee frauds
c) Bank card and cheque fraud
d) Business opportunity fraud
e) Click fraud domain name scams
f) Fraud government agency scams
g) Identity fraud
h) Online shopping fraud
i) Plastic card fraud
j) Rental fraud
k) Romance scams
2. How many of the reported cases were investigated by your force (please break down by category*)?
*Specified Categories:
a) Account takeover
b) Advance fee frauds
c) Bank card and cheque fraud
d) Business opportunity fraud
e) Click fraud domain name scams
f) Fraud government agency scams
g) Identity fraud
h) Online shopping fraud
i) Plastic card fraud
j) Rental fraud
k) Romance scams
3. What was your total 2021 budget?
4. In 2021 did you have a specific budget for investigating fraud? If so, please state how much it was.
5. How many of these cases were passed on to Action Fraud?
6. When fraud is reported to you, do you advise the victim also contact Action Fraud?
7. How many of these reported incidents were reported by an individual?
8. How many of these reported incidents were reported by a company?
Response
Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide all of this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).
However, although excess cost removes the force’s obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill I have supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded (see attached file 499A_22_attachment.pdf). 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.
REASON FOR DECISION
With regard to question 2, all cases would have been subject to a level of investigation, in that they would all have been triaged, but not all would have been taken further. However, to determine the number of cases taken further, would require a manual examination of every case. Please note that researching each individual case would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12).
Similarly, with regard to questions 7 and 8, this information is not centrally collated. Therefore, in order to determine this detail, we would also need to conduct a manual examination of each case. Such a search would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12).
This means that the cost of compliance with the whole of your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond, i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12(1) of the FOI Act 2000. For West Midlands Police, the appropriate limit is set at £450, as prescribed by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004, S.I. 3244.
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here:
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.