We rely on banks to make sure our money is safe but many people are unaware of the sheer volume of bank fraud that goes on each year. In June 2022, UK Finance revealed a huge rise in authorised push payment (APP) scams, totalling over £1.3 billion. Since 2020 many banks have been signed up to an industry-wide code of conduct, meant to better protect the victims of scams. But, many victims of APP fraud are finding that code is not working for them...
The immediate reaction to information about scams is to assume it can never happen to you. After all, society has painted a picture of scam victims as being somewhat naive. The fact is, APP scams are what's known as 'sophisticated scams,' and use the very technology put in place to protect you in order to fool you into believing you're talking to a legitimate caller. Lawyers, medical professionals, college graduates... Nobody is safe from these scammers who will target you in the most vulnerable of moments. What's worse, by the time you understand how they are getting away with their scams, they have already moved on to their next trick, making their scam even more sophisticated. That's why people keep falling for them. The information the public have is always going to be behind what the scammers are actually doing right now.
Silence of the Scams is a documentary that looks into APP fraud and the massive effect it is having on society. criminals impersonate a range of organisations such as the NHS, banks and government departments via phone calls, text messages, emails, fake websites and social media posts to trick people into handing over their personal and financial information. They subsequently used this information to convince people into authorising a payment.
We were victims of an APP scam in the spring of 2022. We thought we were protected, because of the APP code of conduct. We soon realised, that might not be the case.
We are currently building our team and are looking at various funding options to complete this documentary. We believe that this subject is too important not to talk about and are committed to getting the message out to a wider audience. As we are piecing together our research, we will also make that available on the website.