What UK law actually provides
Fraud sits across criminal, regulatory, civil and consumer-protection law in the UK. Each has different burdens of proof, different clocks, and very different odds of returning money.
How to use this page
The provisions below are summarised in plain language and simplified. The UK has three legal systems — England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland — and criminal procedure, limitation periods and court remedies differ between them. Scotland differs most.
A summary cannot tell you where your own case sits, because it does not know your facts. Book an appointment and we will work through it with you.
The offences most often engaged
You do not need to identify the right section to make a report — the police do that. But knowing the vocabulary helps you describe what happened in terms an investigator can act on.
Fraud
The core offence in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, committed in one of three ways set out in sections 2 to 4. It turns on dishonesty and an intention to make a gain or cause a loss — the money does not have to actually move. Maximum ten years' imprisonment on indictment.
Fraud by false representation
Dishonestly making a false representation — about a fact, the law, or a person's state of mind, by words or conduct — intending to gain or to cause loss. This is the section behind most investment, romance, impersonation and purchase scams.
Failing to disclose & abuse of position
Dishonestly failing to disclose information you are under a legal duty to disclose, and abusing a position in which you are expected to safeguard someone else's financial interests — engaged by misuse of a power of attorney or a trusted adviser turning on a client.
Articles for use in fraud
Possessing, making or supplying anything for use in fraud — including phishing kits, scam scripts and fake websites. Relevant where the people who built a scam are not the people who ran it.
Common law fraud in Scotland
The Fraud Act 2006 does not generally apply in Scotland. Fraud there is a common law crime — achieving a practical result by false pretences — alongside uttering and embezzlement. The conduct covered is broadly the same; the charge and the procedure differ.
Blackmail
Making an unwarranted demand with menaces, with a view to gain or to cause loss. Engaged by sextortion and by impersonation scams that threaten arrest, deportation or a court summons. Maximum fourteen years.
Computer misuse
Unauthorised access to computer material, and unauthorised acts impairing the operation of a computer — engaged by remote-access, account-takeover and SIM-swap scams.
Money laundering
Concealing, arranging, acquiring, using or possessing criminal property. Relevant to money-mule exposure: victims recruited to forward funds can be investigated, so get legal advice early rather than waiting.
Failure to prevent fraud
Since 1 September 2025, large organisations commit an offence if an employee or agent commits fraud intending to benefit them and they had no reasonable prevention procedures in place. Relevant where a legitimate business profited from the scheme.
Beyond the criminal law
Several of the most useful levers for victims sit outside criminal law entirely — in payments regulation, consumer credit, financial services law, data protection and the victims' rights framework.
Victims' Code
Code of Practice for Victims of Crime in England and Wales; Victims and Prisoners Act 2024
Gives every victim of crime twelve rights, including to be referred to support services, to be kept informed about the investigation, to make a Victim Personal Statement, and to complain if the rights are not met. Scotland's equivalent is the Victims and Witnesses (Scotland) Act 2014; Northern Ireland's is the Victim Charter.
Compensation orders
Sentencing Act 2020 ss. 133–146
On conviction, a court can order the offender to pay compensation for your loss, and must give reasons if it decides not to. Compensation takes priority over a fine where the offender cannot afford both. Scottish courts have an equivalent power.
Confiscation
Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, Parts 2–4
After conviction the prosecution can seek confiscation of the offender's benefit from crime. Where the offender cannot pay both, the court can direct that compensation to victims is paid out of the sums confiscated. Tell the officer in the case early that you want to be considered.
Payment Services Regulations 2017
regs. 74–77
Where a payment was unauthorised — you did not make or consent to it — your bank must refund it by the end of the next business day. Your liability is capped at £35 unless you acted fraudulently or with gross negligence, and you must tell the bank within 13 months.
APP scam reimbursement
PSR rules (Faster Payments); Bank of England rules (CHAPS)
For payments you were tricked into making from a UK account on or after 7 October 2024, the sending bank must reimburse up to £85,000 per claim, normally within five business days. It may apply an excess of up to £100 (not if you are vulnerable) and can refuse only if you were grossly negligent or are yourself party to the fraud. Claims must be made within 13 months of the last payment.
Consumer Credit Act 1974
s. 75
Makes a credit card provider equally liable with the seller for misrepresentation or breach of contract on a purchase with a cash price between £100 and £30,000. It needs a direct link between card, seller and purchase — paying a scammer via a crypto exchange usually breaks it.
Financial Services and Markets Act 2000
ss. 19, 21, 24
Carrying on regulated investment business without FCA authorisation, and communicating investment promotions that have not been approved, are criminal offences — as is falsely claiming to be authorised. Check the FCA Register, and report unauthorised firms to the FCA.
Money Laundering Regulations 2017
MLRs; FCA cryptoasset registration
Cryptoasset exchanges and wallet providers doing business in the UK must be registered with the FCA for anti-money-laundering purposes. A crypto platform absent from the register is operating outside the UK regime.
UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018
ICO
Organisations must keep personal data secure, report serious breaches to the Information Commissioner, and can be liable to compensate you for loss or distress caused by a breach. Where a leak enabled the fraud, a complaint to the ICO is a separate track worth using.
Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024
Part 4, Chapter 1
Since 6 April 2025 this prohibits misleading and aggressive commercial practices, replacing the 2008 regulations. Consumers have direct rights to unwind a contract, a discount, or damages where a trader used a prohibited practice.
Property (Digital Assets etc) Act 2025
In force 2 December 2025
Confirms that crypto-tokens and other digital assets can be personal property in England, Wales and Northern Ireland — putting on a statutory footing the court decisions that let victims freeze and claim stolen cryptoassets.
The remedies that actually move money
Criminal proceedings punish. Civil proceedings recover. If meaningful sums are at stake and there is any identifiable asset or intermediary, the civil track is usually where recovery happens.
Norwich Pharmacal order
Requires an innocent third party mixed up in the wrongdoing — a bank, a crypto exchange, a telecoms company — to disclose who received your money or controls an account. Often the only way to put a name to a wallet or a mule account.
Bankers Trust order
A disclosure order aimed at banks where there is a strong case of fraud, allowing you to follow the money through account statements and transfers before the trail goes cold.
Freezing injunction
Stops a defendant — including "persons unknown" — from moving assets, sometimes worldwide. Usually granted without notice in urgent cases, but it carries a duty of full and frank disclosure and an undertaking to pay damages if it was wrongly granted.
Proprietary claims & tracing
Follow the value of your money into whatever it became — another account, property, or cryptoassets — and claim it as yours, which can give you priority over the recipient's other creditors.
Dishonest assistance & knowing receipt
Claims against third parties who dishonestly helped the scheme, or received your funds knowing where they came from — sometimes the only defendants left with assets.
Unjust enrichment
Where someone was enriched at your expense without a legal basis, restitution may be ordered even if they were not dishonest, subject to defences such as change of position.
In England and Wales these are urgent, technical applications, usually made in the Business and Property Courts of the High Court — which have built up a substantial body of law on crypto fraud against persons unknown, including permission to serve disclosure applications on exchanges abroad. They are also costly, so a solicitor will want to see traceable assets before recommending the spend.
Scotland has its own equivalents: interim interdict, arrestment and inhibition to freeze assets, and commission and diligence to recover documents.
The clocks you cannot afford to miss
Claims and complaints expire. Some of the most important deadlines are not court limitation periods at all, but the much shorter windows for claiming from your bank.
England, Wales & Northern Ireland
Six years for most claims in contract and tort (Limitation Act 1980; Limitation (Northern Ireland) Order 1989). Where the claim is based on fraud or the facts were deliberately concealed, time does not start until you discovered it, or could have with reasonable diligence (s. 32).
Scotland
Five years for most claims for payment or damages (Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973), generally running from when you knew of the loss, that it was caused by someone's act, and who they were — subject to a twenty-year long-stop.
Bank & ombudsman deadlines
APP reimbursement: 13 months from the last payment. Unauthorised payments: tell your bank within 13 months. Financial Ombudsman: normally within six months of the firm's final response, and within six years of the event or three years of when you realised.
Practical takeaway: assume every clock started the day of the last payment, and put your bank claim in writing straight away. Missing the 13-month reimbursement window or a limitation period ends that route permanently, no matter how strong the case was.
Tax treatment of losses
How a fraud loss is treated for tax depends on its character. A loss on a real investment that became worthless may support a negligible value claim for Capital Gains Tax, but HMRC's view is that cryptoassets stolen from you are not a disposal, and money handed over for an "investment" that never existed may not give rise to an allowable loss at all.
This is fact-specific and mistakes are expensive. Speak to a chartered tax adviser or accountant before claiming anything, and keep the evidence package you built for the police report — it is the same documentation they will need.
Where does your case sit in all this?
A summary cannot tell you that, because it does not know your facts. Book a time and we will work through which of these provisions actually bear on your situation — and what your deadlines are.
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