Five of Britain’s ten most wanted fraudsters are foreign nationals, the government Joint Fraud Taskforce has revealed.
The City of London Police and the National Crime Agency (NCA) are currently calling for the public’s help in catching ten wanted fraudsters, who between them are linked to over £20 million in fraud losses, revealing the names of their top ten most wanted.
But the release of the top ten most wanted list reveals that migrants are disproportionally represented among those who have committed the most serious crimes.
Among the top ten most wanted fraudsters are
- Marius Lucian Anton, 31, a Romanian national with links to the Midlands, who is wanted by Cheshire Constabulary for committing multiple automated teller machine (ATM) fraud offences across the country since 2012.
- Alexia Thomas, a 43 year old Nigerian who is believed to be involved in the supply of false immigration documents to individuals looking to gain British citizenship, sold for around £300 each.
- Faisal Butt, 39, of Lahore, Pakistan, who is wanted for conspiracy to defraud after accessing over one hundred customer bank accounts. Customers lost hundreds of thousands of pounds from their accounts, while multiple banks were targeted by Butt and his criminal colleagues.
- Bayo Lawrence Anoworin, 41, from Lagos, Nigeria, who was part of an organised group which defrauded NHS Trusts in the UK and Guernsey of £12 million, laundering the money between 1 January and 2011 and 31 July 2012.
- Alex Mckenzie, 33, also known as Jaswant Singh and James McKenzie, a US over-stayer who targeted people using the gay social networking app “scruff”, defrauding them out of more than £300k while pretending to be an MI6 agent.
Also on the list are:
- Naeem Ahmed, aged 44, wanted for stealing brand new mobile phone handsets worth £40,000 from shops around the country by using fraudulent payment details.
- Sandeep Arora, 42, who is wanted in connection with the evasion of over £4.5 million in VAT and Film Tax from HMRC after setting up fake Bollywood film production offices in London. Arora is currently believed to be in India.
Three more fraudsters make up the full list. They are:
- Levi John Coyle, 36, of Colchester, who sold fake shares, defrauding investors out of £700,000 between 2009 and 2010 whilst claiming to be a broker.
- Felix Rooney, who also goes by other names including Michael Hannon and Martin Connors and speaks with an Irish accent. Rooney conned an old man in Manchester out of nearly £100k by claiming he needed work done to his roof.
- Adam James Stagg, 29, who is thought to be living in Manila. Stagg is wanted by police in connection with a £20,000 online fraud where victims have been duped into paying hundreds of pounds for designer and luxury watches they never received.
The names are being released ahead of the Crime Survey of England and Wales, which is expected to show that fraud is presently the most prevalent crime in the UK. These will be the first full year results that contain questions on fraud and cyber crime. Interim results published last October showed that there were 5.2 million acts of fraud and 2.5 million cyber crimes over the year.
Donald Toon, Director of the NCA’s Economic Crime Command, said: “The annual losses to the UK from fraud are estimated to be more than £190bn. Behind this headline figure lie the actions of criminals like the wanted fraudsters highlighted in this appeal, who have caused distress and loss to people and businesses up and down the country.
“Law enforcement cannot tackle this problem alone. It is only by working together, individuals, law enforcement, Government and the private sector – using structures like the Joint Fraud Task Force – that we can protect the UK against fraud.
“It is important that anyone able to provide information on the ten fraudsters we are highlighting today takes the opportunity to pass that information to law enforcement to help bring them to justice.”