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Brits fall foul of phone fraud
Millions taken in by scammers

By Dan Ilett

Published: Thursday 05 January 2006

Scammers have duped two million Brits into calling premium-rate phone lines at rates of £1.50 per minute.

And more than 15 million adults have received automated phone calls from scammers in recent years inviting them to claim a prize by calling a dodgy number, according to consumer watchdog magazine Which?.

The survey found more than half (28 million people) of the British adult population have at some point been singled out by con-artists trying to steal money though a variety of scams. Five million of those people are said to have responded to the scams but 23 million ignored the prompts.

Although the phone scams were found to be the most widespread, eight per cent of the 1,050 people surveyed said they had been targeted by 'Nigerian 419' email scams.

Malcolm Coles, editor of Which?, said in a statement: "The con-artists who run these scams are experts in fooling people into parting with their money.

"Unfortunately, it's rare to get something for nothing - if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."