Fact Check: Debunking Viral Claims About UK Immigrant Crime Statistics

A viral TikTok video claiming to rank immigrant groups by the fraud they commit has been found to be misleading, with an analysis of official UK government data showing the claims are not supported by the facts.

The video alleges that people of Indian and Nigerian descent are the top two groups for fraud in the UK. However, data from the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office presents a different picture. Official government sources, including the latest available statistics on foreign nationals in prison, do not publish a specific ranking for fraud by nationality. Instead, they provide data on the overall number of foreign national offenders (FNOs) in the UK prison system.

According to a Home Office report from August 2025, the most common nationalities among foreign national offenders in UK prisons are:

• Albanian: 1,193
• Polish: 759
• Romanian: 716
• Irish: 707
• Lithuanian: 339

This data shows that Indian nationals, with 320 prisoners as of June 2025, and Nigerian nationals, with 233, are not among the top five most common foreign nationalities in UK prisons, as was claimed in the video.

Furthermore, a separate report from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) confirmed that while fraud is the most prevalent crime against individuals in England and Wales, there is no official breakdown by the nationality of the perpetrator. This makes the specific ranking provided in the viral video impossible to verify with publicly available, official data.

The discrepancy between the social media claims and official statistics highlights the importance of relying on verified government sources for information on sensitive topics. The UK government regularly publishes detailed statistics on crime and justice, which are a transparent and reliable source of information for the public.