Berna's story about Romance Fraud

This a video developed as part of a campaign to raise the awareness of Fraud, how to spot the signs and avoid becoming a victim developed by the Police and Crime Commissioner for Humberside.

This a video developed as part of a campaign to raise the awareness of Fraud, how to spot the signs and avoid becoming a victim developed by the Police and Crime Commissioner for Humberside. The impact on a victim of fraud can be considerable and have a huge impact on their confidence and wellbeing as well as their financial situation.

The new campaign, Say No To Fraud, developed by the PCC’s Community Engagement Team, features the real stories of local victims of fraud and aims to reduce the number of victims by committing to increase knowledge of the types of fraud, the methods used by the criminals and advice on how to protect yourself and those you love from becoming a victim of these crimes.

Recognising that the people of Humberside are fundamentally polite and friendly people, the team wanted to ‘give permission’ to our local residents to ‘Say NO to Fraud’. That might mean closing the door on a person while you check their credentials, putting the phone down mid-conversation to ring your bank yourself, saying NO to anyone asking for money or bank details that you may have befriended online. It may seem rude at first, but these are serious organised criminals who will be pretending to be someone or something they are not, they are ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ at your door, on the phone or online and it won’t matter if you offend them. Genuine agencies will always understand and appreciate your caution. We are also asking our communities to take 5 minutes to talk about fraud with people you care about. Some victims of fraud are embarrassed and might find it embarrassing to tell anyone, because they feel they have been duped, victims often blame themselves for being scammed. As a result of this we have committed to remove the word ‘Scam’ from our vocabulary in respect of this and future fraud campaigns.

Whilst our office staff became Scambassadors through Friends Against Scams training run by national Trading Standards, we began to recognise that there is an element of victim-blaming and minimising the crime when using the word Scam. We opted to talk about Fraud as the serious crime it actually is. It is never the victims fault, they have had their money stolen by unscrupulous criminals who will target them again and again using different methods. We need to stop feeling embarrassed about becoming victims and take back our right to say no to fraud! Close the door, press delete or hang up on these criminals.

More information can be found on social media #SayNoToFraud and online at www.saynotofraud.uk.

Видео Berna's story about Romance Fraud канала Office of Police and Crime Commissioner Humberside