Police can't stop credit crooks

Dan Atkinson|Mail13 April 2012

DELAYS in fraud law reforms have allowed credit card swindlers to carry on cheating - and the police can't touch them.

Anyone using a stolen credit card to buy a service - insurance, for example - over a touch-tone phone would not be breaking the law as it stands, so long as they did not talk to another human being.

As technology advances and more companies offer such services, the law has become outdated. Equally, using stolen credit card details to pay online for services would not constitute an offence at present.

But changes, which have been under discussion since 1976, are unlikely to be made this side of next year's expected General Election.

Although no figures are available for this specific abuse, Home Office Minister Baroness Scotland said earlier this year: 'Fraud costs the UK economy £14bn a year, but it is too easy for defendants to escape justice because of legal loopholes.'

There is almost no chance of a Fraud Bill being mentioned in the Queen's Speech - due in November --which will set out the programme for the new Parliamentary session.

George Staple, former director of the Serious Fraud Office, said: 'The principal concern is that technology has outstripped the law.

'But I am not hugely confident that there will be an Act before the end of this Parliament.'

In July 2002, the Government's legal adviser, the Law Commission, urged a radical shake-up of fraud law, with the creation of two new offences: one of fraud, the other of obtaining services dishonestly.

The commission claimed that changes in technology meant this second offence was badly needed, because it would not rely on proving that someone had been deceived.

'As the use of the internet and automated call centres expands, this gap in the law will be increasingly indefensible,' the commission added.

The commission's draft Fraud Bill would abolish both the common law offence of conspiracy to defraud and the eight offences of fraudulent deception contained in the Theft Act.

It suggests that a new offence of fraud, based on deception, should carry a maximum ten-year prison sentence, while obtaining services dishonestly would carry a maximum five-year sentence.

Although the debate has been active for 28 years, Home Office consultation on the draft bill has only just ended.

According to Christopher Dickson, former senior assistant director at the SFO, reform has been held up by a dispute between prosecutors and academic lawyers.

He said: 'Prosecutors wanted the new fraud offence to be based on the notion of dishonesty, but the academics seemed to believe the notion of deception was somehow more elegant.

'As it is, the draft bill gives us both, which makes it more complicated than it needs to be. But it is better than nothing.'

The present SFO management is strongly in favour of the new bill, believing it will make charges easier to explain to jurors.

The Home Office was unable to comment on whether the bill would feature in the Queen's Speech.

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