Trading Standards Service

West Yorkshire Financial Exploitation and Abuse Team

The key objective of the team is to protect vulnerable people from financial abuse relating to goods, services and/or scams/fraud, and to detect and investigate incidents of financial abuse of vulnerable adults, including offences relating to adult social care funding, leading to successful prosecutions and convictions of offenders, and safeguarding victims and potential victims.

Where relevant, the use of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA) to confiscate assets from offenders and compensate victims (including the five councils), will be undertaken.

Undertaking effective safeguarding of victims and potential victims in relation to existing offending and repeat victimisation is also critical to the role of the team.

Who Are We?

The West Yorkshire Financial Exploitation & Abuse Team (WYFEAT) is a unique, multi-disciplinary team.

Based within West Yorkshire Trading Standards Service, we have Trading Standards professionals, Financial and Criminal Investigators, Intelligence Officers, police, and a social worker all working together to safeguard adults at risk who may be at risk of, or who have already experienced, financial abuse.

Established in 2016 to tackle financial exploitation from rogue traders and doorstep crime, WYFEAT expanded in 2018 to undertake criminal investigations involving the financial abuse of adults at risk on behalf of the five West Yorkshire councils.

What Do We Do?

WYFEAT provide information, advice and support on scams and frauds; we offer safeguarding support to adults at risk who have experienced financial abuse and/or exploitation; our officers / colleagues gather intelligence and undertake specialist fraud, financial and complex criminal investigations.

We also offer comprehensive training on financial abuse for organisations, to support professionals to recognise and respond to concerns of financial abuse / exploitation.

Contact WYFEAT

Safeguarding is everybody’s business

WYFEAT work closely with our partner organisations including the police and the five local authorities / Adult Social Care directorates (either or) within West Yorkshire as well as other statutory and third sector organisations. We all have a role to play in safeguarding adults at risk from financial abuse. Effective partnership working has been shown to achieve better outcomes for people.

WYFEAT offer person centred support. We work with people to identify and respond to their financial safeguarding needs. Our social worker can provide safeguarding advice, support and intervention; with consideration given to relevant legal frameworks including the Mental Capacity Act (2005).

Where necessary / appropriate we will make referrals to third sector support organisations and/or the relevant local authority for statutory assessment.

WYFEAT can undertake complex criminal investigations to pursue offenders, including an increasing number which are carried out by serious and organised crime groups/ gangs who have targeted multiple victims, and seek redress for victims of financial crime including confiscation / removal of assets from offenders and compensating victims under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2008.

Practitioners may be experienced in recognising adults at risk, however they may lack awareness and experience of certain types of financial abuse, especially more sophisticated forms of fraud. This can lead to people experiencing financial abuse not being provided with appropriate responses and safeguarding concerns not being raised. WYFEAT provide education and training for professionals and, where we can, seek to prevent the harm of financial abuse by raising awareness and providing information, guidance and advice related to the various scams and frauds that are perpetrated by doorstep criminals which often involve exploiting and grooming people and pressuring them into buying goods or services.

For more information, please click on the relevant links below: