Top 10 Biggest Scams In British History

#10: Donald Crowhurst

This scammer was born in 1932, then in the 60s pursued his dreams of creating a successful electronics company. To do this, he needed money, so he thought up a cunning plan to win a round-the-world yacht race in 1968. Unfortunately, his boat was pretty pathetic, with constant leaks, meaning he didn’t stand a chance. Instead of sailing around the world, he secretly hid in the Atlantic Ocean, but lied to race organisers about his progress. The story ends tragically, with Crowhurst struggling immensely with the isolation, then sorrowfully taking his life in 1969 before the race’s conclusion.

#9: Nick Leeson

In the 90s, Nick Leeson worked as a derivatives trader, but wasn’t exactly good at it, since he caused Baring’s Bank to collapse. It was Britain’s oldest merchant bank at the time, having been founded in 1762. Leeson worked for them in the early 90s, then he began gambling on Japanese markets, which was not what he was paid to do. He ended up losing Baring’s hundreds of millions, but reported his losses as profits, making them believe everything was okay. They discovered his fraudulent activities in 1995, but by this point, the damage was done. He’d lost the company roughly £827 million, and they went bust the same year, with Leeson getting sent to prison in Singapore for his misdeeds.

#8: LCF Ponzi Scheme

London Capital & Finance was a company that raised millions of pounds from investors via mini bonds. These are high-risk investments, but in this scenario, they were way riskier than usual. That’s because LCF turned out to be a Ponzi scheme, according to the High Court. They ended up having to pay the old bondholders with money from new bondholders, a scheme that eventually blew up in their faces. The court found they used this money for lavish luxuries, such as sports cars, holidays, properties, and also they apparently donated large portions to the Tories.

#7: £53 Million Benefits Scam

Universal Credit is intended to support people struggling to find work, but some people go a step too far and steal way more than they should get. The most prolific example of this was perpetrated by five individuals in the 2010s, who created thousands of false claims. They’d steal people’s identities or create new people entirely, letting them steal over £50 million in total. The group then laundered the money so they could spend it on luxury cars and designer clothes. All five involved were caught in 2024, and the group got over 25 years in jail for their years of treachery.

#6: Poyais

In the 19th century, Britain’s colonial empire was at its peak, leading many Brits to move abroad to its overseas possessions. This led Scotsman Gregor MacGregor to come up with his infamous Poyais scheme. He told hundreds of people that he was the Prince of Poyais, a fabricated nation in Central America. MacGregor then sold people land certificates for his fictional country, and sent quite a few of them on their way there. He even stole their money and converted it into Poyaisian dollars. The settlers ended up in present-day Honduras, where they set up a camp and waited for Poyaisian authorities, who never arrived. Many were eventually saved by a British schooner, but many more didn’t make it out alive.

#5: iSpoof

Operation Elaborate was a massive undertaking that lived up to its name, being Britain’s largest ever fraud investigation. Its target was the website ispoof, which let people make phone calls impersonating legitimate organisations. Criminals would use it to scam people for millions of pounds, pretending they were places like banks, then convincing them to give them sensitive information. Police ended up shutting the site down in November 2022, after over a year of investigating. Over 100 arrests were made, including the site’s administrator, who ended up getting a 13-year sentence in the slammer, beginning in May 2023.

#4: The Cryptoqueen

Qian Zhimin is originally from China, where she became absurdly wealthy for her crypto Ponzi scheme. Her company managed to accumulate over £4 billion from investors, promising people astounding 300% returns every year. It also became a bit of a pyramid scheme, primarily targeting the elderly. She then turned it into Bitcoin to cover her tracks, but the police eventually caught on, so she fled to Britain. In London, she began renting a mansion and then tried to launder her money through expensive properties. This didn’t work at all, as she couldn’t explain where her immense wealth came from. This caught the attention of the police, who raided her home and seized £5 billion of Bitcoin, but she wouldn’t be caught until 6 years later.

#3: The Captain Tom Foundation

Captain Sir Thomas Moore became a celebrity in 2020 for raising money for charity during COVID. He raised millions of pounds, but sadly passed away in February 2021, at the grand age of 100. In 2020, the Captain Tom Foundation was established in his name, but it became super controversial. His daughter, Hannah Moore, ran it and used the charity’s funds to build an illegal spa. It was also found to be pretty poorly run, with the funds being wildly mismanaged. This charity came under intense scrutiny, and then Hannah was disqualified from ever being a charity trustee again. Now, the charity basically doesn’t exist, being currently named The 1189808 Foundation.

#2: COVID Loan Fraud

When COVID hit, many of us couldn’t work any longer, so we had to be supported by government furlough schemes. Unfortunately for the government, these schemes had a ton of cracks, and they lost over £10 billion to scammers. Experts warned then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak about the potential for fraud, but he didn’t take their advice fully on board. This led to people taking advantage of the schemes in the exact ways Rishi was warned would happen. Many individuals have since been arrested, with investigations still ongoing, meaning the full extent of the scams is yet to be seen.

#1: The Premium-Rate Phone-In Scandal

Taking our top spot is the phone-in scandal from the 2000s, where broadcasters were taking millions from customers using fraudulent methods. Channels would hold various phone-in competitions, which would cost quite a bit to call and enter. Unfortunately for eager viewers, they had no chance of winning, as they’d finalise results early or just straight up fake the winners. Tons of fines were handed out by Ofcom for these breaches, with the largest being given to “Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway,” which got fined an astonishing £3 million. That was only half of how much they were estimated to have taken, though, with further estimates saying the whole scam amassed a total of £18 million.

Did you already know about all these scams, and do you think any others were worthy of a mention? Let us know in the comments below!