‘Safeguarding’ was a vital but largely unseen duty carried out by British police forces. Monitoring and protecting people who were suffering domestic abuse. Children who were victims of sexual abuse. Young people from overseas, mostly Nigeria, Romania and Albania, who were brought over as slaves and forced into being sex workers or working in other jobs for a pittance. And more recently people who were under observation as victims of internet fraud — many of whom were elderly.
A wide number of both men and women of all ages, but mostly over forty, were currently being targeted by perpetrators of romance fraud. This new, specialist unit, expensive to run, was performing a crucial service, carrying out safeguarding assessments, along with social workers, and working with financial institutions to identify victims — and potential victims — and work with them and their families to try to prevent them parting with their cash.
Many of the victims were elderly and vulnerable with mental health issues, such as dementia and other age-related illnesses. Among the questions facing the team was whether targeted victims had the capacity to make informed decisions or were they just making unwise choices. Increasingly the police were being helped by the staff of money services bureaux, post offices and supermarket banks. There were protocols in place involving all high-street banks and post offices on reporting suspicious transactions. There were likely to be few good reasons, in this team’s view, for any elderly Sussex resident to be sending large sums of cash to Ghana or Nigeria.
The exponential growth of telephone and online fraud had resulted in a step change for the police. In the past, policing policy had been ‘let’s go after the offender’. But with romance fraud, in particular, mostly originating overseas, there were simply not the resources to send officers out to those countries. Too often police forces would have to close their files, marked ‘Undetected’. It was Sussex Police’s Operation Signature that had led the way forward.
The biggest task for the Safeguarding Team was to try to persuade individuals to take a step back and look at the evidence and reality of the situation. One recent such fraud had suckered in a staggering thirty-seven women around the globe — three of whom were in Sussex, their ages ranging from sixty-five to eighty-nine. It was easy for the fraudsters to give a plausible story. All of the women were in love with a hunk of a tattooed bike-fanatic US soldier, whom they thought was in love with them. It had been relatively easy to persuade the three Sussex victims simply by showing them the source photograph of the soldier.
One of the main reasons for victims not coming forward, the team knew, was embarrassment. Many of the victims were smart, professional or former professional people who were supposed to know what they were doing. It was hard for a worldly-wise person, who had handed over every penny they had, to admit this to friends and family. Just as it was equally hard for police officers to have to break the news to someone that their internet lover, who had spent a year rinsing them, did not actually exist.
Behind DS Medlock was a large monitor on which, in turn, examples of the latest sophisticated banking scams identified by the team’s researchers appeared. Emails purporting to be from the high-street bank HSBC warning the recipient their online account was being hacked and to immediately enter their password and change it, along with all other details. Another, similar, from Apple. And another, seemingly from their own Sussex Police Financial Crimes Unit, looking totally authentic, until two spelling errors were pointed out along with the bogus email address, carefully masked.
Next, the people currently on their radar appeared, with a few lines of background. As each one came on the screen, the DS asked her team for any updates.
After twenty minutes of going through the list, they reached the romance fraud category, and a photograph of a handsome, distinguished-looking silver-haired man in his late fifties appeared. His name, below the image, read Major John (Johnny) Fordwater. Financial Crimes Safeguarding Officer DC Helen Searle, a woman in her thirties, raised an arm on which were several chunky bracelets. ‘A bit of a sad story here, boss, I’m afraid. His name first came to our attention two months ago, during Intel’s surveillance of Sakawa Boy social media traffic from Ghana. I actually went to see Major Fordwater myself to try to convince him that he was the victim of fraudsters, but he was, frankly, very rude to me, and refused to believe me. Unfortunately, at that time, I didn’t have the photographic evidence that might have convinced him. So far as he was concerned he was very much in love with a German lady called Ingrid Ostermann, and we were mistaken. Subsequently he has been interviewed twice by DS Potting and DC Wilde, and I understand he has now been presented with the evidence and has accepted the situation — at least I hope he has. He’s paid out about £400,000.’
There was a gasp from the room.
‘Four hundred thousand?’ DS Jon Exton said. He had been seconded from Major Crime because he had previously been in banking before joining the police.
‘Correct, Jon,’ Searle said. ‘He’s in despair. I understand he faces losing his home. He is now cooperating with us.’
The next photograph and name appeared, ‘Betty Ward’. Below was a brief description. Another officer raised his hand — DC Kevin Hall, also seconded to the team from Major Crime.
‘Guv, we’ve had a lot of help on this one from Tesco’s Service Bureau. This is an elderly widow in Brighton, who struggles to get out of an armchair, a blue-rinse granny who is convinced she is in love with the man in the next image and sleeps with a photograph of him beside her.’ He pointed at the screen and everyone in the room turned towards it.
The image was of a young black man with a six-pack and a smiling face, naked apart from a pair of skimpy budgie-smugglers that left little to the imagination.
‘He has been telling Betty for several months that he cannot wait to come to England and make love to her. I won’t go into the graphic details of all the sexual things he’s told her he plans to do with her. But what I can say is that this lady can only walk with the aid of a Zimmer and, fair play to her, the photographs she’s posted of herself to him don’t exactly make her out to be a Page Three girl.’
As photographs appeared of a frail-looking lady in her finery, there were a few raised eyebrows.
Hall went on. ‘A member of staff at Tesco in Shoreham contacted us to say they had concerns. This lady, Betty Ward, had sent two MoneyGrams to Ghana, the first to a “Mickey Mouse”, the second to a “Michael Jackson”.’
The sniggers turned into a ripple of uncomfortable laughter.
‘Seriously,’ Hall said, ‘this guy, whoever he is, convinced her it is just a loan to help with his hospital bills after a car accident, and to pay for treatment for his mother who has cancer. He told her to send the money to these names, otherwise the government would take fifty per cent of it in tax. And she believed him. She’s totally besotted with him. She’s sent him £27,000 to date. Tesco have agreed not to process any more of her MoneyGrams and to let me know if she shows up again wanting to send another. I’ve also alerted Western Union and all the other MoneyGram service bureaux in the area.’
Medlock thanked him and moved on to the next victim on their radar. The name ‘Ralph Beresford’ appeared. ‘This is a new one.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ a young DC from Brighton, Preena Gadher, said. ‘A widower, reported by his daughter who is very concerned. Mr Beresford is seventy-seven, a retired chartered accountant, and has early-stage dementia. She visits her father every week and noticed two days ago that he had an image of, shall we say, a somewhat curvy woman on his computer screen. When she asked him who it was he very proudly said it was his new girlfriend, that she was Romanian and he’d met her on the internet three months previously. He told her the poor woman was in trouble, with nowhere to turn to, and he was helping her to get her life straight. The daughter has access to his computer and checked out his bank. Turns out over the past three months he’s been cashing in stocks and shares, buying Bitcoins and making substantial transactions with them.’