A group of alleged fraudsters are being prosecuted at the Old Bailey for attempting to claim tax credits using the identities of members of parliament, judges, soldiers and police officers. Personal details were stolen from the membership list of the Civil Service Sports Council and used to fraudulently claim tax credits covering a four-year period. The group was successful in claiming tax credits of nearly £2.5 million before Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs identified the issue; the total fraudulent claims for tax credits would have been approximately £10 million.

In consideration of this story and separately, research by fraud prevention group Cifas and LexisNexis Risk Solutions has found that one in five victims of identity fraud between 2012 and 2015 were company directors. In particular, criminals are using publicly available data from Companies House to target these individuals.