Advance Fee Fraud

Barristers at St Pauls Chambers provide legal advice and strategy guidance on all aspects of financial crime, including advance fee fraud. Our legal experts are able to work in both defence and prosecution of advance fee fraud cases.

What Is Advance Fee Fraud?

Advance fee fraud will be familiar to many and most will have had mail delivered either electronically or through the post with the promise of vast returns for an advance fee. In legal terms, what is advance fee fraud?

The legal advance fee fraud definition is as follows:

The targeting of victims to make advance or upfront payments for goods, services and/or financial gains that do not materialise.

These crimes involve a confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance sums of money, in the hope of realising a significantly larger gain, such as money, products or services.

Advance fee fraud examples

• Ticket scams
• Work from home/business opportunity scams
• Loan scams
• Lottery prize draw scams
• Career opportunity scams
• Impersonation of officials
• Online dating scams
• Rental fraud
• Fraud recovery fraud
• Inheritance fraud
• 419 scams

For more information about the types of advance fee fraud, similarly, check out our blog posts for advance payment scams our barristers have worked on.

A factor common in many confidence frauds is that the offender targets a vulnerable victim. It is, therefore, a determinant of seriousness for this type of fraud. An offender is more culpable if he or she deliberately targets a victim who is vulnerable as a result of old age, youth, or disability, and there is a more than a usual serious degree of harm where the victim is particularly vulnerable. Losses made as a result of an advance fee scam can be large, and the emotional and psychological cost can be even higher.

Our fraud lawyers are recognised experts in advance fee fraud cases. Get in touch to find out how we can help with your case.