Euroconsumers will co-host the biggest ever Global Anti Scam Summit on March 26th – 27th when it comes to London for the first time.
Together with the UK Home Office, CIFAS and the Global Anti Scam Alliance, we’ll welcome governments, financial authorities, law enforcement, consumer groups, platforms and cybersecurity firms to grow joint action to protect consumers from online scams which have reached epidemic levels:
Euroconsumers’ recent survey of 4,000 consumers in Italy, Portugal, Belgium and Spain found that 4 out of 5 people had been exposed to a fraud or scam online, losing an average amount of 650 EUR.
Figures from the Global Anti Scam Alliance estimate the totality of consumers’ financial losses to be around $1.03 trillion worldwide.
We know that the impact on victims goes way beyond the financial loss and can last well beyond the initial discovery. At the Summit, Euroconsumers will host a panel that puts scam victims’ experience at the centre.
The ‘Victim impact, Human Cost: building support for scam victims that lasts’ panel will explore the lasting impact of scams on people. We’ll hear directly from people who have experienced scams and learn how they felt in the immediate aftermath of discovery and as time went on.
We will hear from Anna Rowe who set up Catch The Catfish and Cecilie Fjellhøy whose story was featured on Netflix’s The Tinder Swindler documentary. They have joined forces to create LoveSaid, an organisation to support victims of relationship fraud through practical support, mental health support, education and training.
The journey after a fraud can in many ways be worse than the fraud itself. Victims are signposted from pillar to post when often highly traumatised, which can mean missed opportunities for time sensitive financial recovery and other forms of help.
Anna Rowe, Scam victim and co-founder of LoveSaid
Scam victim’s experiences point to a system that is failing victims. This has to change. Prioritising victims means understanding the nature of the crime and the full impact of its aftermath and the role of institutions and companies in making the recovery and rebuilding after a scam easier.
They will be joined by some of the most experienced academics, police services and victim support organisations in the UK who will share how they work with scam victims, to discuss together how people who have been defrauded can be given the practical, psychological and legal support they need. These include Wayne Stevens, National Fraud Lead, Victim Support UK, who will shine a light on some of the features of scams that require a different approach to victim support:
“Fraud is often distinct from other types of crime, because for victims there is rarely any hope of charging or convicting the perpetrators. Therefore, a lot of the support victims need is in coming to terms with this.”
Dr Elisabeth Carter, Associate Professor of Criminology and Forensic Linguist at Kingston University whose groundbreaking work on the language used relationship frauds has led to changes in law enforcement campaigns and police strategy to help disrupt the power of scammers’ fraudulent communication:
“When you study what the fraudster is doing to make themselves so persuasive, so manipulative without ringing alarm bells with the victim, you find the same patterns of communication that you find in grooming or situations of coercive control.
This research has been made possible because victims have shared evidence of communications where they’ve been exploited and defrauded, to help others from being victimised, and to reclaim a sense of empowerment from their experience”
Matt Niblett from UK consumer organsiation Which? will be there to share research on the psychological and wellbeing cost of scams – a hidden cost that needs to be accounted for in impact assessments.
“When talking about the ‘costs’ of fraud or scams, the conversation is often dominated by the financial losses suffered by victims, with the psychological impacts considered as a separate issue.
However, Which? analysis shows that the wellbeing harms, when quantified, can vastly exceed the financial harms. This is important because, until we understand the true cost of victimisation, public policy responses will not sufficiently address the problem”
We’ll also be joined by: ChildNet to learn about the way in which young online consumers experience scams, TikTok and the newly established centralised National Economic Crime Victim Care Unit in England and Wales.
The Global Anti Scam Summit has sold out in person, but you can still sign up to join virtually at: https://www.gasa.org/event-details/global-anti-scam-summit-europe-2025
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