Mortgage fraud now 20% of UK total

The main types of financial crimes include under-reporting of revenue and VAT avoidance. Mortgage fraud now accounts for 20% of all reported fraud cases with around half of total fraud occurring in finance or insurance. For the first six months of this year fraud losses eclipsed previous half year figures and were almost the same as for the whole of 2008. It is the first time fraud levels have soared above the £1bn barrier during the interim period in the seven years accountants BDO have been conducting its market leading survey. The average amount of each type of fraud had rise...