It seems that Action Fraud was set up to take the pressure of the police but what do they do other than log a complaint.

Isn't that what the Police do? When you ring them they give you a Crime Number to enable you to claim any losses from your insurers.

Where we used to live there was a number of cars vandalised on the street and no action was taken. That was until the retired policeman (ex detective) had his and his wifes cars damaged one evening, the next day SOCO were there in huge numbers.

I had to laugh at that one. A lot of those Quangos are a waste of space, and as you say, the Police aren't much help unless you are either an important somebody, a member of the media or on their list of 'priorities' of the month.

Often ordinary people end up either having to endure or investigate the crime themselves. I tried to report an attempted ransomware attack (some nasty piece of work had hacked a firm I'd bought something from [probably a high street store] and got my email address, and tried to extort £1k to 'not give it to X or Y' or reveal the contents of my web cam (I don't have one).

Both Plod and the online reporting website for fraud etc was a waste and they didn't want to know, just giving 'advice' on what not to do generally, even though it wasn't my security that had been breached.

It seems that Action Fraud was set up to take the pressure of the police but what do they do other than log a complaint.

Isn't that what the Police do? When you ring them they give you a Crime Number to enable you to claim any losses from your insurers.

Where we used to live there was a number of cars vandalised on the street and no action was taken. That was until the retired policeman (ex detective) had his and his wifes cars damaged one evening, the next day SOCO were there in huge numbers.

I had to laugh at that one. A lot of those Quangos are a waste of space, and as you say, the Police aren't much help unless you are either an important somebody, a member of the media or on their list of 'priorities' of the month.

Often ordinary people end up either having to endure or investigate the crime themselves. I tried to report an attempted ransomware attack (some nasty piece of work had hacked a firm I'd bought something from [probably a high street store] and got my email address, and tried to extort £1k to 'not give it to X or Y' or reveal the contents of my web cam (I don't have one).

Both Plod and the online reporting website for fraud etc was a waste and they didn't want to know, just giving 'advice' on what not to do generally, even though it wasn't my security that had been breached.

Not surprised they were not interested in a single report of a ransomaware attack - millions of them are occuring at any moment and it only works by closing down who is running them - who will generally be overseas so untouchable.

Hopefully all the scammers, hackers, spammers and reansomware attackers are down with COVID at the moment. May they stay that way.

I don't know how they do it

iirc, its done using _voice over internet protocol_ or Voip. which they are talking about going over to instead of landline, then using software allowing the number dialled in to be the scam number or bridging the connection to a real number

I think thats what they do?

I don't officially work in a bank branch, but pop in to the local one if all the kids are home for somewhere quiet to work.

We have (elderly) customers come in to withdraw cash. Often accompanied by someone.

It's obvious to the staff when the withdrawals are out of character and the bank question the customer.

The customer is told by the crook that the money should be taken out and handed to a courier who will take it to the police as they want to catch the crooked bank staff.

The cashier and manager takes the customer to a small room and calls the police with a code word (standard UK wide) and they are supposed to turn up and explain to the customer that they are being robbed. They do most of the time but not always and sometimes the customer thinks the police officers that turn up are in it with the supposedly crooked bank staff

Often we have to suspend the customer's bank as they are about to hand over their life's savings.

Other times the customer will turn up with "builders" to withdraw tens of thousands for a new roof or to repair some guttering. Again, the police are always called.

I've had to call them with the password when I was visiting a branch of a different bank and an elderly customer was being helped to their cash by another party, much younger and clearly not a relative. The bank staff didn't think anything was wrong. Apparently it was for "care home fees" and was for a few thousand. The amount was probably right but not the method.

I called every number back, all dead lines. They fake the numbers that appear on your phone somehow.

I wonder how they 'fake a number' without faking a real one ?