Identifying telemarketing fraud victimisation through analysis of trueCall nuisance call blocking metadata - a scientific realist evaluation of a situational crime prevention programme

Passenger, Andrew James 2025. Identifying telemarketing fraud victimisation through analysis of trueCall nuisance call blocking metadata - a scientific realist evaluation of a situational crime prevention programme. SPPD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Telemarketing fraud remains a persistent criminological and safeguarding concern, particularly for older adults and others experiencing heightened vulnerability due to cognitive decline, social isolation, or diminished wellbeing. Adopting a public health perspective, this thesis evaluates the Seraphim Telemarketing Fraud Prevention Programme (STFPP), a practitioner-led intervention implemented in Wales to reduce exposure to telemarketing fraud among vulnerable telephone users. Conceptualised as a population-level harm, the programme aims to deliver early identification, proportionate intervention, and scalable protection through the integration of technological and relational safeguards. Grounded in situational crime prevention and routine activities theory, the STFPP combines trueCall nuisance call-blocking technology with Seraphimbeta©, an inference engine developed by the author and programme team. Seraphimbeta© analyses telephony metadata to generate probabilistic alerts indicating suspected engagement with, or vulnerability to, telemarketing fraud. These alerts activate structured guardianship responses delivered by Trading Standards officers, operationalised through public-health-informed models of screening, secondary, and tertiary prevention. A scientific realist evaluation framework was employed to examine how, why, for whom, and under what conditions the programme generated outcomes. The study utilised embedded case studies, qualitative interviews, programme intervention records, and descriptive epidemiological analysis of call-log metadata. Cross-case comparison and retroductive reasoning were used to refine context–mechanism–outcome configurations (CMOCs) and explain outcome variation across users and family members with caring responsibilities. Findings demonstrate that programme effects were selective and contingent rather than uniform. Affective and relational mechanisms—most notably user and carer anxiety, trust, avoidance of confrontation, and the delegation of protective responsibility—emerged as central drivers of engagement, often outweighing cognitive awareness or technical capability alone. Where anxiety and perceived risk were present, users and carers engaged proactively; where absent, protection depended on proportionate paternalistic intervention. Reassurance emerged as a robust but ambivalent outcome, capable of supporting wellbeing while, in some contexts, displacing informal guardianship. The thesis advances crime prevention theory by extending situational crime prevention beyond rational choice, reframing guardianship as relational and distributed, clarifying the conditional operation of signal crimes and CPTED perspectives, and demonstrating the value of realist evaluation for analysing complex, technology-assisted safeguarding interventions.

Item Type:	Thesis (SPPD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Schools > Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Additional Information:	Thesis copyright © 2026 Andrew Passenger
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	15 May 2026
Last Modified:	19 May 2026 13:02
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/187010

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