
Those are aspects of first-party fraud, which can range from providing incorrect details about your earnings to secure a mortgage to saying you didn’t receive a product to receive a refund when it has been successfully delivered.
Lying about not receiving goods from a retail company is the most common first-party fraud scenario cited among Cifas’ survey of UK adults. A fifth (19%) of the 2,000 respondents committed what is known as retail non-delivery fraud.
The second-most common first-party fraud activity was lying on a CV to get a job, which almost a fifth (18%) said they did.
Just under a sixth commit single-person discount fraud to bag a cheaper council tax bill by not declaring to local authorities when a partner had moved into their home permanently.
The age group most likely to be involved in any form of first-party scenario is those aged between 25 and 34 years old, which represented 19% of the crimes.

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Further, a third (36%) did not believe selling a car on a hire purchase agreement and continuing to make repayments to the finance company after it was sold was illegal. This activity, known as asset conversion fraud, was deemed as the ‘most reasonable’ type of first-party fraud among those surveyed.
The next-most reasonable was ‘money muling’, which 17% of respondents believed was okay to conduct.
Money muling is when an account holder is offered a sizeable amount of money to store in their account, often by a scammer.
This can often be a means to keep cash somewhere safe during a scam after the money is received by criminals involved in crimes including drug dealing and sex trafficking.
Young people are often targeted by fraudsters to do this and, last year, cases jumped up by 44%, as Lloyds prevented £114m from going to criminals as part of a crackdown on the offence.
‘First-party fraud causes significant harm to communities’
Mike Haley, CEO of Cifas, which conducted the annual Fraud Behaviour survey, said: “First-party fraud is too often seen as a victimless crime. But the truth is very different. It is a growing threat and causes significant harm to individuals, businesses, and communities, and can result in severe repercussions for perpetrators.
“It is only through effective, cross-sector collaboration and education that we can collectively improve public awareness and ensure consumers have a greater understanding of the true dangers of first-party fraud and its lasting impact.”