Our fraud fighters were busy this February combatting international fraudsters!
It was no surprise that February has been equally as prolific in the hunt to fish out tenancy fraud as January, as the economic climate has not improved since last month. As ever, where there is economic hardship, there is fraud. This trend is a tale as old as time itself.
A twist in that tale has developed in February, however. For as long as we've been writing these monthly fraud round-ups, the majority of the fraud cases we find stem from UK citizens. The vast majority of these UK fraud cases are modifications to bank statements. This month, however, that proportion was lower, with UK frauds only accounting for 28% of all cases (usually its around 50% of all monthly cases). Other culpable nationalities this month includes China, Kuwait, Germany, Poland, India, Brazil, Thailand and Vietnam.
UK fraudster profile for February
Homeppl's mission is to bring equity of access to all renters, including and especially international tenants who may have thin or none UK credit files.
We pride ourselves on being able to assess anyone, anywhere and provide landlords and letting agents with the best available tenants from any country around the world.
In order to do that, we've also spent the last few months educating our clients, as well as the rental community of the latest, up-to-date trends on tenancy fraud, straight from our primary data sources.
This is the Homeppl fraud report for February:
So what are the changes in data from January to February?
In a nutshell:
Gender & age
A significant change in the gender demographic for tenancy fraud sees female applicants become the majority with 64% of all cases. Male fraud cases make up 36%. In January this was Male - 82% and female - 18%.
The average age of fraudsters shot up from 28 to 33.
Income
There's been no real change in the claimed income of our fraudsters month on month. In January, applicants had claimed to earn an average of £73,919. This month, the average sits at £71,580.30 per annum.
Location
Doncaster creeps its way into the UK tenancy fraud hotspot graph this month. London shoots up to taking a whopping 71.4% of all UK and Irish fraud cases. This should serve as a stark warning for predominantly London-based letting agencies. Dublin-based agencies should be aware of regular fraud reports in their city too.
Within the UK capital, East London retains the title of worst affected area in the country. For the 2nd month in a row.
Fraud Spotlight 💡
This month's fraud spotlight highlights a fake student letter that we received towards the start of the month.
At first glance, it seems harmless.
However our fraud prevention technology picked up on a few key facts. Firstly, the document was created using Microsoft word. In many bank statement fraud cases, this would be a huge red flag, but this is not the major cause for concern here.
We are also able to detect that the document was created hours before it was modified last. This got our 'spidey senses' tingling.
And finally, and most telling, we could see that the salary information provided within the letter has been significantly inflated beyond its original amount. That edited detail would have put our client at a total fraud risk carrying the value of £84,200 in rental contract and potential eviction, damage and legal costs.
Upload documents yourself to find fraud 🚨
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