NESTA Crime Online - University of Brighton Repository

victims since they bear the direct financial costs of ID fraud – although these may well
be passed on to customers in higher service charges. 53
The risk of perpetrating ID fraud appears to be relatively low, since most cases are not
reported to the police. An Experian study in 2007 indicated that ninety per cent of
identity fraud cases were not reported to the authorities and only six per cent of the
reported cases led to a prosecution. 54
In 2007, CIFAS reported 77,500 victims of identity theft and identify fraud in the UK.
The cases reported have exponentially grown from 9,000 in 1999 to 80,000 in 2006,
which represents an annual increase of over 30 per cent, though there was a small 3 per
cent fall between 2006 and 2007. According to Experian, directors of medium and large
companies and high income earners (more than £50,000 a year) are more likely to
become victims of identity fraud – between three and five times higher propensity –
55, 56
than the average UK resident.
Figure 3
53 Any such compensation to the individual needs to be fought for through the civil courts. This is likely to
continue to be the case until legislation is introduced specifically to outlaw identity theft, as in the USA;
www.cifas.org.uk/.
54 Experian (May 2008), “Victims of Fraud Dossier”. Based on the 6,000 victims that sought their services in
2007.
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
55 Heera, S (2008), “Directors of larger dealerships at significant risk of identity theft, warns Experian”, New
Release, Experian.com. See http://press.experian.com/documents/showdoc.cfm.
56 Making London an obvious hotspot for ID fraud.
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