Serious Fraud Office (SFO) – UK

The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is a UK government agency with an unusual combined mandate: it investigates and prosecutes the most serious, complex, and high-value fraud, bribery, and corruption cases in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The SFO operates under the Criminal Justice Act 1987, which gives it extensive powers to compel the production of documents and to question suspects and witnesses. It targets cases where the economic harm is typically in the hundreds of millions of pounds and where the complexity exceeds the capacity of ordinary police forces.

The SFO does not handle individual consumer fraud complaints; its threshold is for large-scale, often corporate or cross-border frauds. It has investigated matters such as Ponzi schemes defrauding thousands of investors, corrupt contracts involving major companies, and large-scale market manipulation. Where a fraud case involves many victims, the SFO sometimes establishes a victim portal to keep victims informed of case progress.

Ordinary fraud victims should report to Action Fraud, not the SFO. However, if you are one of many victims in a large-scale investment fraud and you believe the scheme meets the SFO's criteria, you can flag the case through the SFO's online report form at sfo.gov.uk. The SFO will assess whether the case falls within its remit. Victims who want information on an existing SFO investigation can check the SFO's website for press releases and case status updates.