Police not acting on P2P Fraud cases

The problem as I see it is often one of judgement; one man's fraud is the police's "just bad luck" rather like the police's rampant predatory paedophile of the 70's is another man's favourite childhood TV presenter who was just a bit over friendly. An unsavoury comparison but it illustrates the point.

As AH points out genuine criminal fraudsters will target any business/industry where they think they can get success & often are much more sophisticated than the Nigerian billionaire willing to share his oil wealth if you just sent him £XXXX to free the transaction. However that is very different to the desperate business that gets p2p funding as a last resort & then the enterprise fails anyway; which is where platform DD comes into it's own, both by trying to avoid such perilous borrowers in the first place or at least securing the loan against some tangible assets with a waterproof contract. This is one area that AC have proved successful, so even when loans fail there is something to recovery but as we all know that process is often very long & torturous. Other platforms clearly either have next to no DD or are very poor at it & ultimately will be the first to fail, as the lenders/market gives it's verdict.

In the few clear cut cases where fraud is accepted, whilst it is a criminal act, a prosecution will need both enough evidence & a reasonable likelihood of success to go forward; which involves both police, platform & CPS working together, which is a scenario that seems quite remote at least IMHO. On platforms where the lender/borrower are directly linked with a contract, such as Bondora, it is theoretically possible to bring a private prosecution but this is where the cost vs. benefit test is very rarely going to be met (if ever) so unless you are willing to funds years of legal wrangling without any clear chance of success it is not going to happen & as others have said you need to factor in a level of capital loss & move on.

I'd like the name for reference please, PM if it's difficult.  Just in case.

See A criminal loan decision BO15A325 . It's not the only criminal case there, just is one that I happen to have.

I think we need a change of law if we cannot do it through contracting the platform.

So my next question is, what contract do we have with the various platforms? Can they ever be useful in such cases?

No doubt all the Marcus Christies of this world will now have this argument firmly in their briefcases ready to defend accused fraudsters in their fight to not pay back ill gotten gains from fraudulent P2P loans. We need a judge to set a precedent by stating in his judgement on a real case, that the platform is the transgressed rateher than 1000+ individual lenders.

Mmm! Didn't "top tier lawyer" on Fictitious Credit default himself eventually? Was anything recovered? His multiple websites boast(ed) of the firm's efficacy in criminal law.

"Fraud" as defined by CIFAS has many types including first-party (i.e. lying), evasion of payment and third-party (impersonation).

The element RateSetter considers criminal is impersonation. We have identified multiple impersonation attempts where we know the name, address and contract details of the fraudster - with sufficient evidence that could result in a prosecution. Although alas this is usually only true of the more stupid or careless fraudsters rather than the professional gangs who know how not to implicate themselves.

After talking with local Police and the MET, we have strict instructions to only use ActionFraud to report impersonations with all the evidence. This is quite time consuming.

The issue is one of resource, ActionFraud and the Police via the National Fraud Database only have the time (and possibly inclination) to investigate a small number of reported cases. Therefore they only focus on frauds that have multiple links to other frauds reported by other institutions. This is rare, and I know personally the two cases invoked out of the 100s that ideally would have been auctioned.

That's why I call it NoActionFraud.

Interestingly there is a much better funded operation for false insurance claims. They even advertise on the telly and promote their prosecutions to give the impression this is not a crime without consequence. Alas, attempted bank theft via electronic methods is largely still a criminal act without consequence. 

Kevin.

I can't comment about other platforms. At RateSetter any losses are fully covered by the Provision Fund, irrespective of if they are credit or fraud defaults. So no RateSetter lender has ever lost money with RateSetter for fraud (or any other reason). 100% track record record and all that....

In fact, for the record, although I will not provide statistics the RateSetter fraud avoidance performance to date has been outstanding, compared to benchmarks. It's one of the ongoing proudest things that we've done to date, as it requires constant attention and innovation. Things are much harder when you are not the current account provider.

Kevin.