Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) claims fraud has reached such a scale in the UK that it should be treated as a national security threat. The think tank has called on UK Intelligence agency’s to take a greater interest in the crime, which cost up to £190 billion a year.

There were 3.7 million reported cases of fraud alone during 2019-20 with credit card, identity and cyber-fraud the most prevalent according to The Crime Survey for England and Wales.

Fraud against the public sector, is estimated to cost £31-48 billion a year, but that number is about 3x greater in the private sector. An estimate from 2017 put the cost of fraud to businesses at around £140 billion, but senior fraud professional said even after 30 years of investigating it was hard to truly know where the fraud is coming from.

Despite the growing size of the problem, the police response remains underfunded and lacking focus with no national strategy in place. There is a “responsibility vacuum” with fraud becoming everyone’s problem but no ones priority argues RUSI.