My hometown is a card fraud hotspot!

by John Fitzsimons on 08 September 2009  |  1 comment
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Ilford is a fairly unremarkable place in East London, and yet new research has found it’s in the top ten worst towns for credit card fraud

Most people have only, at best, a vague idea of where Ilford is. If you have ever taken a train east out of Liverpool Street Station, then chances are it might ring a bell, but otherwise you won't have heard of it

It's a typical grey, unremarkable little town. Except that it is a financial fraud hotspot.

This first came to my attention last year, when a succession of mortgage brokers were banned for fraudulent activity - false documents in mortgage applications, that sort of thing - all operating out of this little town. It even resulted in the Guardian devoting a whole piece to Ilford, describing it as the mortgage fraud capital of Britain!

My dark sense of humour found it quite funny, but I soon forgot about it. Until this week, anyway, when I saw some research by a fraud prevention firm named 3rd Man about the worst offenders for credit card fraud.

And guess who makes the top ten, in terms of the overall number of bad transactions? You guessed it, little Ilford, with 7,000 dodgy transactions, worth a total of £2m! What is it about the place that attracts such shady dealers? Even worse, another little town just down the road, Romford, occupies 6th place.

These are just small little towns that barely register on the national radar, and yet their inhabitants are responsible for millions and millions of pounds of fraudulent actions. It's mind boggling, particularly when you consider how much they are punching above their weight as well - the relative behemoths of Coventry and Birmingham only make 8th and 9th place respectively!

Other members of the top ten include Nottingham (3rd), Manchester (4th) and Erith Marshes in 10th.

Clearly, I should have been raised north of the border - the areas with the least fraudulent activity are Lerwick in the Shetland Islands (14 bad transactions) and Kirkwall in Scotland (34 bad transactions).