Over £2.4m caught in tenancy fraud in June '23
The summer surge in rentals continues as people in the capital and around the UK look for newer dwellings. It's an incredibly busy time for letting agencies and landlords alike, and during the current economic hardships, its essential that they remain vigilant to the threat of tenancy fraud.
As usual, the majority of the fraud we detected came via our advanced document analysis technology, which found many modifications to fake bank statements and payslips. There has been a whopping 102% increase in tenancy fraud on last month. This month, we flagged fraudsters from the UK, Brazil, Nigeria, Portugal, India, Latvia, the USA, Ghana and Saudi Arabia!
This month, we encountered a notable 'repeat offender' who submitted their third application for a different property with us. It's astonishing that this individual attempted to deceive us with fake bank statements in all three applications, involving three different clients!
UK fraudster profile for June
Let's analyse the data from June's fraud report and gain insights into the characteristics of the typical tenancy fraudster at present, as we do each month. We present this information regularly to help letting agencies, whether they are affiliated with Homeppl or not, identify the latest fraud trends to watch out for.
Here is the Homeppl fraud report for June (compared to May):
So what are the changes in data from May to June?
In a nutshell:
Gender & age
The difference between male and female fraudsters shifted slightly this month, going from a clean 60/40% split to 57% males and 43% females.
The average age increased from 30.9 to 33.6.
Income
In the previous 3 months to May, the average claimed income sat within the £70-£80k bracket. May was an outlier as the number shot up to £98k. In June, the average claimed income dropped back down to £75,082.
Location
There's been a slight shift in the UK landscape for fraud. In May, over 90% of UK tenancy fraud took place in London. This dropped to 81% in June, with Telford, Liverpool and Essex also reporting cases.
From January to April, East London represented the hottest spot in the capital for tenancy fraud. This switched for the first time in May, with a huge shift to the West. 66% of all London tenancy fraud happened in West London in May. This month, West London is still dominant, but slightly less dominant representing 55.6% of all London fraud cases.
Above you can directly compare the profile and how it has changed from May to June in 2023.
Fraud Spotlight 💡
For June's fraud spotlight we examine a shocking example of document fraud. Above we have a Barclays bank account.
At first glance, there seems to be little wrong. But once you run the document through our Fraud Finder tool, the deception is alarming. Take a look:
We can see that the name has changed from Aline to Robert. The date of the statement has changed. The address has changed. Not only that the bank balances and almost all of the transactions have edited too!
If this went undetected, this would have cost approximately £120,000 in rental value and extra costs!
Become a Fraud Finder yourself! 🚨
Fraud Finder, Homeppl's latest product, conducts intelligent document analysis by extracting & analysing financial data whilst flagging fraud in financial documents. It assesses affordability, underwrites risk, detects fraud and qualifies your customers.
Industries this technology is perfect for:
Trial the tech yourself and see exactly how it works:
