FOI 1190/26
REQUEST
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would like to please request information regarding ghost broking and car/ van insurance scams recorded by your force.
Please provide the following information for CARS / VANS, for the last three financial years (2023/24, 2024/25 and 2025/26):
- The total number of reported incidents of ghost broking relating to cars.
- The total number of victims of these reports, by age.
- The total reported financial loss to victims associated with ghost broking relating to cars.
- The average reported financial loss per report associated with ghost broking relating to cars.
Where possible, please provide a breakdown of the above information by financial year (2023/24, 2024/25 and 2025/26)
For the purposes of this request, by ""ghost broking"" I refer to fraud involving individuals or organisations falsely presenting themselves as car insurance brokers or intermediaries and selling, arranging, or facilitating fraudulent, invalid, or non-existent car insurance policies.
RESPONSE
Your request for information has now been considered, and I am not obliged to supply the information you have requested.
Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires South Wales Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which:
(a) states that fact,
(b) specifies the exemption in question and
(c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.
In relation to your request, the following exemption applies:
Section 12(1) – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit.
At South Wales Police we monitor and collate statistical data on crimes, incidents and other data relevant to our daily business. The predominant purpose of this is to identifying pattern and trends, so resource allocation and policies can be managed to ensure public safety. The data you have requested is not routinely collated in the format that would easily answer your query.
Unfortunately, there is not a specific category for insurance fraud related investigations on our crime and incident recording system (Niche RMS). Therefore, a search has been conducted on Niche RMS for all occurrences recorded under the occurrence type ‘CR42 Fraud & Forgery’ where ‘South Wales’ is selected as the ‘Owning agency’ between 1st April 2023 and 31st March 2026.
This search retrieved 2,753 results.
We estimate that it would take approximately 5 minutes to individually interrogate each occurrence in order to establish their relevance and to retrieve the details requested.
We therefore estimate that it would take in excess of 229 hours to answer your request.
It is estimated that the cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the "appropriate level" as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
In the case of the police service, the appropriate limit is £450 which has been calculated to equate to a total of 18 hours of work.
If any part of the request exceeds the fees limit, then Section 12 applies to the whole request.
In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a refusal notice.
Excess cost removes the forces obligation under the Freedom of Information Act, however under Section 16 – Duty to provide advice and assistance, an authority is required to offer an applicant the opportunity to redefine their request within the cost limit.
Please be advised, the data contained in this response is not reflective of the total number of reported cases of fraud. The National Fraud Intelligence Bureau is the unit within the City of London Police that is responsible for the collation of all fraud reports, including insurance fraud within the United Kingdom. The City of London Police is the national policing lead for economic crime and works in partnership with policing and other law enforcement agencies.
The City of London Police run a service called Report Fraud who receive reports relating to cyber-crime and fraud. Their Analysis Services team are responsible for the assessment of reports made and to ensure that fraud reports reach the right place.
You may wish to contact Report Fraud who may hold information to answer your request.
For ease, their link is provided below:
UK's Home for Reporting Cyber Crime & Fraud - Report Fraud