Offences Against Property
(1) Cheating by pretending to be someone else, knowingly substituting one person for another, or falsely representing oneself/another as a different person, is "cheating by personation" - applying whether the impersonated individual is real or imaginary. (2) Punished with up to 5 years' imprisonment, fine, or both.
This specifically targets fraud committed through impersonation - notably, it applies even when the impersonated identity is entirely fictional/imaginary, not just when a real specific person is impersonated.
This is the key provision for impersonation-based scams - a scammer who pretends to be a bank official, a government officer, a celebrity, or even a fictional persona created purely to deceive victims, in order to defraud them, is prosecuted under this enhanced cheating-by-personation offence rather than ordinary cheating.