What happened
UK Finance's 2025 annual fraud report recorded £1.17 billion in total UK fraud losses for 2024, including £450.7 million lost to authorised push payment fraud across under 186,000 cases, the lowest APP case volume since 2020. Within that, impersonation scams in which criminals pose as a bank or the police and tell the victim to move money to a so-called safe account saw losses fall 16 percent and case numbers fall 32 percent against 2023.
How the deception worked
A caller presents as the victim's bank fraud team or as police, often after a preparatory text or a spoofed caller ID matching the number on the back of the bank card. The victim is told their account has been compromised by a criminal, potentially an insider at the bank, and that the only way to protect the balance is to transfer it immediately to a new safe account which the caller supplies. Because the victim authorises the payment themselves, normal card fraud controls do not apply. The levers are institutional authority, fear of loss, and the instruction not to discuss it with branch staff who might be complicit.
AI involvement · Unknown
UK Finance's 2024 reporting does not break out AI-enabled impersonation as a separate category.
The control that would have caught it· our reading, not a claim from the sources
No bank or police force ever asks a customer to move money to a safe account; confirmation of payee checks, in-app warnings at the point of transfer and mandatory delays on first-time large payees are the effective controls.
Sources (2)
- Fraud continues to pose a major threat with over £1 billion stolen in 2024UK Finance·ukfinance.org.ukOpen ↗
- Smishing: Package Tracking Text ScamsUnited States Postal Inspection Service·uspis.govOpen ↗
This entry summarises public reporting. It is not a legal finding, and details can change as investigations conclude. Found an error? Send a correction.