A Daily Mail investigation has accused Royal Mail of a failure to crack down on scammers using their network to contact vulnerable people.
The paper has shown that letters sent via bulk mail contracts through the Royal Mail system appear to be trustworthy as they have Royal Mail branding on the envelopes. The investigation also showed that people lost a lot of money when responding to these fake offers.
However, Royal Mail is in a bind – the postal operator claims that it is illegal for them to check those letters and this prevents it from stopping fraudulent postal deliveries. Royal Mail is understood to be ‘upset at the disquiet’ that the scam mail causes the public.
Royal Mail stated: “We have closely examined the list of companies suspected by the Daily Mail of sending scam mail. We have already passed it to our partners in the National Trading Standards Scams Team so that they can investigate further.”
The Daily Mail alleged that scammers have paid companies to print the letters in bulk that contain messages from clairvoyants, prize draw scams as well as illegal advertisements for unlicensed health remedies. Some are even printed abroad before being taken to the UK and sorted before being put in the Royal Mail system that makes the final delivery to UK homes.
One of the companies that supplies these scam mail envelopes to the Royal Mail delivery network is Whistl.
In a statement on its website Whistl said: “Scam mail is a terrible abuse of the postal system and it is unacceptable how vulnerable people are targeted by these scammers. Scamming is also not isolated to mail but is frequently carried out using other methods of communications such as email, text and through social media channels.”
The firm said once made aware of scam mail it acts to “terminate the relevant contract” with the organisation involved.
“But we acknowledge as an industry we need to do more,” the company added.
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