Local MP Kevin Foster joined the call last week for constituents to Take Five to Stop Fraud. Take Five Week ran from Monday 22nd to Friday 26th January, and has been created to help empower people to protect themselves against financial fraud. This includes phone-based scams, email and text message scams as well as online fraud.
Financial Fraud Action UK figures indicate there were over 1.8 million incidents of financial fraud last year, impacting people right across the country – including Torbay. To address this, Take Five Week brought together banks and building societies, local law enforcement, the Government and MPs, as well as public and third sector organisations to give advice to the public. In support, Kevin Foster MP visited staff at Barclays in Torquay who were promoting the campaign on Friday.
Kevin said: “Criminals will use all sorts of tricks to get hold of people’s financial details and regularly target the most vulnerable in our society. Take Five aims to help people spot the text, email or phone call which may be more than it seems at first glance. The aim of Take Five way is to get more people to pause and think before sharing their details or sending money to an unknown account.”
Alex Rea, Barclays branch manager at Torquay, said “Protecting our customers’ money is of utmost importance to us and we work hard to continually raise awareness of scams and frauds to help stay one step ahead of fraudsters. We were delighted to welcome Mr Foster to the branch on Friday as part of the Take Five to Stop Fraud campaign.”
For more information and advice visit www.takefive-stopfraud.org.uk