Gang suspected of £5m cheque scam held after long-running operation by police

Officers from the Dedicated Cheque and Plastic Crime Unit (DCPCU), City of London Police and West Yorkshire Police have arrested and bailed five men and two women in a series of raids during a joint operation.

About 100 chequebooks were seized, each containing up to 50 cheques, with the potential to yield in excess of £5m worth of fraud during the operation in Yorkshire and Scotland.

Numerous printers and printing materials that could be used to forge cheques, and a sizeable quantity of crack cocaine and heroin were also found during searches of 22 addresses and a vehicle.

Detectives have been investigating a counterfeiting network for months and suspect the gang could have been making up to £50,000 a week using counterfeit cheques, potentially netting up to £10m in total.

Officers say the use of cheques has gone down in recent years but there are still more than 2.7m cheque transactions a day.

They say organised crime gangs continue to steal customer cheques to use as templates, and are also targeting company chequebooks. The gangs are now purchasing higher quality printers, paper and ink from the internet to produce counterfeit cheques that are much more difficult to detect.

This, combined with many people no longer being familiar with cheque security, is creating increasingly fertile ground for fraudsters.

The head of DCPCU, Det Chief Insp Dave Carter, said the arrests sent out a strong message to criminals that his unit was “alive to the threat of counterfeit cheques” and it was something it took seriously.

The Commissioner of the City of London Police, Adrian Leppard, said: “This operation emphasises the importance of UK police forces coming together to tackle fraud and fight the common enemy that is organised crime.”

The five men, three aged 32, 33 and 30, and the two women, aged 31 and 29 were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud. They were questioned in West Yorkshire police stations and later released on bail.