FOI 13218-25 Investment scams
Request to Northamptonshire Police:
The purpose of this request is to gather data on reported investment scams and the outcomes of these reports, specifically how many resulted in convictions.
Note: For the purpose of this request, "investment scams" refers to fraudulent schemes where individuals are deceived into making financial investments that result in loss. This includes, but is not limited to: pension fraud, cryptocurrency scams, forex trading scams, boiler room schemes, fake bonds or shares, and any other deceptive investment opportunities promoted with the intent to defraud.
Specifically, I am seeking anonymised data on the following from January 2020 to July 2025:
The total number of investment scam reports received by your force, broken down by calendar year (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and partial data for 2025).
Of these reports, the number of cases that have resulted in criminal convictions
Only if held, the details of those convictions, including:
Type of sentence (e.g., fine, custodial sentence)
Amount of any fine issued
Length of custodial sentences, where applicable
Response:
Data reviewed was from 01 January 2020 – 30 June 2025
Northamptonshire Police can only supply the requested information for investigations being conducted by ourselves. These investigations are commenced as a result of either:
- Victim contacting our Force Control Room to report an investment fraud that meets the Call For Service criteria.
- A pursue dissemination sent to Northants Police by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB)
The data contains the number of individual Action Fraud reports (i.e. victims) and not the number of investigations, as multiple Action Fraud reports may be included under one investigation.
Data regards residents of Northamptonshire who have reported investment frauds to Action Fraud can be obtained by sending a Freedom Of Information request to Action Fraud.
Data shows the number of Action Fraud reports (victims) where a positive outcome has been achieved i.e. suspect charged, or the offence was taken into consideration alongside other offences.
Information on convictions i.e. results at Court, are held by His Majesty’s Court Service and not held on our local systems.
2020=11, 2021=5, 2022=17, 2023=16, 2024=10, to June 2025(inc)=1
The numerical data presented in this response is an un-audited snapshot of un-published data sourced from "live" systems and is subject to the interpretation of the original request by the individual extracting the data.
Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that the data has been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting the data.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when the data is used.
If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data, we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.