UK Government Promises To Crack Down On Text Scammers

The UK government has promised to stop “text-scam misery” by putting in place a number of new steps to fight theft.

The plans will be presented to Parliament on Wednesday. They include the creation of a new National Fraud Squad, which will be run by the National Crime Agency and the City of London Police and will be supported by 400 new jobs.

The government has also promised to put £30 million into a reporting center that will be up and running by the end of the year.

Other steps include making it illegal for criminals to use “Sim farms,” which are technical tools that let them send scam texts to thousands of people at once, cracking down on “number spoofing,” and banning cold calls to sell financial goods.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says:

”Fraud now accounts for over 40% of crime. It costs us nearly £7 billion a year and we know these proceeds are funding organised crime and terror. What’s more, new technologies are making these scams easier to do and harder to police. It’s time to take the fight to the scammers and fraudsters, and put an end to these crimes which can devastate lives and livelihoods within seconds.”

The party leaders said that the plans were too little, too late.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, says:

“This plan…fails to match the scale of the problem.

“All the home secretary has delivered is a rebadging of existing national teams, and a re-announcement on the replacement of Action Fraud from almost two years ago.”