1. SUFFOLK TRADING STANDARDS
Thank you for inviting us to attend your meeting.
Introduce yourselves.
We are here to talk about scams and the work Suffolk Trading Standards has been undertaking to assist victims of financial abuse and scams.

2. Who are Trading Standards?
Suffolk Trading Standards is part of Suffolk County Council. We are placed within the Public Health & Protection Directorate. Our role is to protect consumers and traders in Suffolk by :
enforcing government legislation (UK and EU)
Offering advice to consumers (via Citizens Advice Consumer Service Helpline)
Providing advice and inspections for businesses
investigating offences and prosecuting offenders
But first, a brief description of where we fit within SCC.

3. What work does Suffolk Trading Standards cover?
Examples of our work include:
Age restricted sales / Illegal tobacco
Weights and Measures – pubs/petroleum
Fair Trading – doorstep incidents / scams /NCCZ
Explosives - fireworks
Product safety – consumer products - e.g. electricals,
imported goods at docks
Food standards – labelling /composition
Intellectual property – counterfeit goods
Animal feed - crops
Animal health & welfare – animal movement and
disease control
This is to explain what we actually do. 9 main areas of legal discipline / enforcement.
20 operational field officers, supported by Managers and Technical Support staff, covering the whole of the County.

4. We are working to achieve a fair and safe trading environment, and informed, confident consumers.

5. Our work with adults in need of care /support in the fair trading environment
Protect consumers from becoming victims of crime – utilising our doorstep rapid response system
Setting up No Cold Calling Zones
Work with Police, Social Care, banks and the Court system
We actively prosecute rogue traders who target vulnerable consumers
We support victims of financial abuse (scams)- with reassurance, education and removal of scam mail/products.
During this presentation, we are focussing on our work with those known as adults in need of care/support - vulnerable consumers – how we assist them - by supporting victims and assisting with the national issue of tackling the scammers and bringing them to justice.

6. What is a scam??? It’s a FRAUD – criminal activity and
financial abuse.
Designed to persuade consumers to part with their money.
Usually offering a win or prize – neither of which exist.
Offering “miracle” products that may be unsafe.
Offering “exclusive or luxury” products that aren’t !
Offering a link to a dearly departed relative via clairvoyance, mediumship etc.
Offering a relationship – by , Facebook, Skype
All of the above for a “reasonable” fee !!
Can be by post, phone or .
Prize draws
Lottery wins
Overseas inheritance awards
Miracle creams, lotions, beauty products, cure-alls
Food stuff such as chocolates or grocery items that can be bought much more cheaply in local shops eg. vitamin pills from ASDA or Tesco.
s or Facebook contacts offering a relationship, that soon turn into requests for money,

7. Who is a scam victim?
ANYBODY (emphasis) can be a scam victim, we can all be vulnerable at any point in our lives – vulnerability is not necessarily age-related.
Eg. 30 year old woman, convinced she is in a relationship with a man in Ghana, that she has never met. We came across her in a visit to a Post Office, where the lady was sending £1200 cash via MoneyGram to her “partner” so he could come over to the UK. We outlined dating scams to her and explained that this demand for money was a likely scam, we even showed her literature describing her relationship. She refused to believe it – she said he was waiting at the airport in Ghana ready to come over and she was so excited to see him. She sent the money anyway. Post Office staff were distressed by the incident, they knew her and felt she was lonely and vulnerable.

8. How do I know if someone is a victim?
The above images are actual photos from consumers homes.
Is the person/client/friend/relative sending off coupons for product and services?
Do they spend ages on the phone responding to overseas calls?
Do they seem to run out of money?
Are they sending off for a new cheque book very often?
Are piles of paperwork appearing all over the house?
Are they hiding letters, parcels, products in strange places?
Are they claiming to be in better health thanks to a new medicine/product?
Do they receive a lot of post or parcels?
Have they stopped going out and interacting with friends?

9. Suffolk TSD is working with national team to stamp out scams – with the focus being on mail scams
National Scams team investigators work with international law enforcement agencies , UK enforcement agencies, Royal Mail , financial institutions and airlines to investigate the activities of criminals targeting UK consumers with scam mail.
Recently, 300 PO Boxes in the Netherlands have been closed down – these boxes were used to target UK customers with scam mail and receive proceeds of the scams. Hundreds of thousands of items were seized and large quantities of cash were seized by Dutch authorities. The investigation is ongoing.
The national team has compiled stats:
Average age of a victim is 74 yrs.
Average loss of money is £1059.
Nationally, there are CONFIRMED scam victims in the UK at the moment, but the number is rising.
• Only 5% of scams are reported.
• There are over 3 billion nuisance calls received in the UK each year.
• Figures released by Financial Fraud Action reveal that a scam is committed every 15 seconds.
• The current rate of scams nets £52bn a year (this is more than the UK spends on defence or education).
• Investment scam victims lose an average of £20,000 to fraudsters
• 29% of scam victims suffer a major depressive episode in the 20 months after a crime.
• Those that have been defrauded are two-and-a-half times more likely than non-victims to be in care or dead within 2 years of the event.

10. In Suffolk…..
We began our dedicated scams project in 2014; there were over 1,500 MAIL scam victims identified; and we contacted all in writing.
We were able to return cheques to some consumers thanks to work with the National Team and Royal Mail who intercepted the fraudulent transactions.
We gave tailored advice to consumers and conducted home visits.
And our work continues…….

11. In Suffolk……. We have already completed :
Over 132 personal visits – more to come.
Over 122 consumers have been advised by phone.
Over 284 consumers sent scam information by post.
Approx 500 kg of scam products have been removed from consumers homes.
Installation of 26 phone call blocking devices for the most vulnerable.
25 partnership events with external agencies eg. banks, CAB – and this is increasing as scams awareness increases.
Training our colleagues and partners with County Council and Health.
Publicity campaigns e.g Scamnesty, Scams Month etc.
Strong social media presence – alerts are sent out weekly to Consumer Champions and interested parties.
We work with the National Scams team by providing intelligence to their investigators and contacting confirmed MAIL scam victims.
[94 decided they weren’t victims and did not want a visit or phone advice.
66 were clearly victims but did not want to believe us – they could not process the info that they had been scammed.
144 moved away
48 were deceased]
During these visits, other scams often came to light – eg. an elderly lady whose daughter was the victim of an internet romance scam. She had been sending money abroad, via Western Union, to her “boyfriend” - that she had never met.
Additional visits are then made.
We have completed the work on this initial tranche of victims. However, the National Scams Team have sent us the next list of names of scam victims, so we are working on contacting another batch of Suffolk consumers.

12. How does scamming affect consumers
How does scamming affect consumers? This is scam mail removed from 1 consumer’s home
Lottery wins, clairvoyant papers etc
Describe work during a home visit to a victim – anecdote
Having to store the large amounts of post and products makes victims extremely stressed and upset. They often physically cannot handle the amounts of items they receive.

13. Dealing with scam mail becomes an obsession, a way of life

14. Scam products removed from one consumer’s home
This box was the result of 1 visit to the premises.
We also removed 8 burn bags full of scam mail.
Include anecdote
All products ordered by mail.

15. We had to revisit the same consumer on another 2 occasions, where we ended up removing further products that had been hidden in a disused fridge.

16. Consumers don’t focus on their own wellbeing, pursuing the prize is their priority

17. But there are other types of scam/fraud/financial abuse
Telephone scams
Investment scams
Technical Support scams
Bank account courier scams
Online scams
Phishing s
Dating scams
Social media scams
Survey scams
Doorstep scams
Rogue Traders
Bogus Officials
Fake charity collections
There are other types of scams and fraud – phone scams, dating scams, doorstep trader scams
Anecdote ref doorstep rapid response.

18. What happens to victims?
Many become estranged from family/carers.
They become isolated and secretive.
They run out of money and end up depending on the state for support – care and housing.
They become stressed/obsessed/ ill and end up depending on the NHS for further health support.

19. We need to work together to support victims and prevent this fraud and financial abuse of the most vulnerable.

20. What are we doing about it?
Consumer and business education.
Supporting adults in need of care/support – removing scam products, working with families to close down bank accounts etc.
Making referrals and working with Police, Health & Social Care.
Working with National Scams Team to disrupt scammers.
Training and learning events – eg. our Join the Fight Conference.
Making sure that Suffolk has a robust approach to scams – we will not tolerate scammers!

21. Raising Awareness with our partners
Partnership working:
Police, Victim Support, Social Care, Health services, Fire Service , Citizens Advice Bureaux, the public, banks, the media
Work with ACS, Police and media
Work with Adult Safeguarding Board
Citizens Advice Consumer Helpline triage all our calls
Regular appearances on BBC radio and TV
Partnership with Checkatrade – vetted tradespeople for consumers to call
And articles in the press
NCCZ set up to deter rogue traders
Working with banks and other financial institutions to train staff and give customers help and information

22. So how can you help?
The Consumer Champion Network meets our service priority – “To develop ways to actively engage the public, community and business to increase resilience against scams and rogue traders”.
This links to the following Corporate Priorities:
• Support those most Vulnerable in our communities
• Empower our communities
• Support the Local Enterprise Partnership ( LEPs) to increase economic Growth
We need information to be spread within communities, helping the most vulnerable and strengthening the neighbourhood bond.

23. Consumer Champion Network
Consumer Champions are expected to:
learn about what's happening in Suffolk
share information with their community
report details of concerns back to Trading Standards
Consumer Champions can be anyone who wants to help and who cares about their community.
The Consumer Champion Network is an initiative by Suffolk Trading Standards, launched in 2011, to reach out to Suffolk residents and make it easier for everyone to access information about consumer protection. The aim of the network is to educate and empower residents about their consumer rights and alert them about scams and rogue traders in the hope they can protect themselves and the people they love.
The network is an ever growing group of educated and empowered individuals that know their rights, and are supporting Trading Standards to build an army of rogue-savvy consumers & businesses, whose aim is to “Join The Fight” to make Suffolk a rogue free zone.
We now have over 500 Consumer Champions
Consumer Champions are expected to:
• learn about what's happening in Suffolk
• share information with their community
• report details of concerns back to Trading Standards.
Volunteers are spread across a wide geographical area. Therefore the department informs champions of scams/rogue traders in their area using a number of different channels, including:
• Blogs
• Facebook
• Twitter
• And a weekly update
Anyone wishing to join the Network can apply at

25. Thank you for your attention.
If you have further queries, please contact Suffolk Trading Standards on
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If you have a consumer complaint, please contact our partners at Citizen’s Advice Consumer Helpline on