The South West Regional Organised Crime Unit (SW ROCU) is one of nine regional units across England and Wales that delivers specialist capabilities to target and disrupt serious and organised crime.
Police officers and staff seconded from the region’s five forces work alongside colleagues from UK Border Force, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), the National Crime Agency (NCA) and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
SW ROCU provides specialist capabilities to deliver the ‘4P’ response in line with HM Government’s Serious and Organised Crime Strategy:
Pursue offenders through prosecution and disruption
Prepare for when serious and organised crime occurs and mitigate its impact
Protect individuals, organisations and systems
Prevent people from engaging in serious and organised crime
FRAUD
Fraud makes up approximately a third of all reported crime and between 2020 around 4.4 million frauds were reported in the UK, with a loss to individuals of around £7-billion in total. Frauds against individuals are frequently targeted at elderly and vulnerable citizens, for whom the consequences of victimisation can be devastating, both psychologically, as well as financially. However, as much as 80% of fraud is preventable with relatively simple safety measures that can employed to protect us from the scammers that we may encounter on a daily basis.
NARRATED FRAUD SAFETY PRESENTATION VIA YOUTUBE
The Regional Fraud Protect Advisor for the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit has produced a fraud safety video which can be viewed on YouTube via this link: https://youtu.be/Oyc3ITOxvsY
LITTLE BOOK OF BIG SCAMS
The Little Book of Big Scams is an excellent fraud prevention resource, created to help raise awareness of the dangers of fraud and offer preventative measures to help keep everyone safe from the insidious creep we are seeing in financial crimes in recent years.
You can download a copy of the Little Book of Big Scams here: The Little Book of Big Scams – 5th Edition
- An audio version of the Little Book of Big Scams can be found at this link: https://soundcloud.com/metropolitan-police/the-little-book-of-big-scams
- A business edition of the Little Book of Big Scams can be found at this link: https://nbcc.police.uk/images/guidance/the-little-book-of-big-scams-business-edition.pdf