Action fraud
Action Fraud is the UK's national fraud and Internet crime reporting centre. It provides a central point of contact for information about fraud and cyber crime. All police forces in England & Wales now refer victims of fraud to Action Fraud to ensure crimes of this nature
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are centrally coordinated within the NFIB and dealt with in a standardised manner. Since all reports of crime are received into the NFIB, they can identify serial fraudsters and organised crime gangs as well as established and emerging crime threats by analysing this information alongside data from other sources.
The implementation of Action Fraud is a huge step forward in enabling police nationally to prevent and deal with fraud. It became fully operational across England and Wales in April 2013 and means we are in a much better position to understand fraud and to deal with it more effectively. People are coming forward to report with more confidence and we anticipate an increase of up to 20% in the reporting of fraud.
New national structure
As part of the framework supporting Action Fraud, we are assisting police forces across the UK to implement new structures to provide a more consistent and coordinated approach to this crime. This system is the first of its kind in the UK and means that, where clear evidence of criminality and the potential for arrests and intelligence is seen, crimes can be sent to the relevant law enforcement agency. To support this, every Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) region (clusters of force areas) will have up to two Regional Intelligence Officers and a Regional Fraud Team. Overseeing these teams will be a National Coordinator’s Office, working to nationally agreed case allocation criteria, standard operating guidance and a performance framework.
To facilitate the implementation of this process, we have an extensive network of dedicated ACPO Single Points of Contact (SPoCs) working with us to put this process into action and to assist us in applying a standardised national model for investigation and standards.
Regional intelligence officers
The Regional Intelligence Officers are a dedicated resource within the existing ACPO Regional Intelligence Framework. They will extend the ability of the NFIB to gather intelligence from across the UK and draw closer links with Organised Crime. Using data from Action Fraud alongside local and regional sources, they will provide a profile of fraud crime within a region, inclusive of victim profiles and crime typology. Additionally, they
© CI TY S ECURI TY MAGAZ INE – SUMMER 2013
will identify preventative and investigative strategies to counter the threat of fraud to all communities. They will identify opportunities for effective enforcement and prevention activity, derived from a local, regional and national fraud intelligence picture, and provide a key focus to protect all communities in the UK from the threat of fraud.
Regional fraud teams
The Regional Fraud Teams should be recruited this coming year and will provide another dedicated proactive specialist resource to manage complex multi-jurisdictional investigations. There is a requirement for a national investigative capacity to tackle organised crime, thereby reducing the significant amounts of harm caused by fraud across the UK. This additional capability to tackle organised crime will lead to an improvement in the scope and quality of fraud investigations. Through this multi-faceted approach we will be able to stem, strengthen and safeguard the UK from the threat of organised crime at a local, regional and national level.
Fraud and terrorism
We prioritise fraud associated with terrorism. Our priority matrix is based on harm due to the impact it has on individuals, communities and the economy.
We work with many organisations to address these threats as we are well aware that money raised by fraud can fund terrorism. We use our expertise to disable these organisations, as the most dangerous people in our society, be they terrorists or organised criminals, can be disrupted if their fundraising activities are stopped.
City of London Police Economic Crime Directorate
The City of London Police will continue to liaise directly with businesses in the exceptional cases of serious corporate fraud. In these circumstances, our experience of complex corporate fraud helps us to work closely with the organisations involved to determine whether fraud has taken place. For each potential fraud, we can determine
whether it is just bad businesses, for example where money has been lost due to poor investments, whether it is a regulatory matter or it is criminal. The lines between these areas can easily get blurred. The relationship between the City of London Police and the financial sector in the City of London is unique. It is the reason we are the National Lead Force for the country. We prioritise fraud and have a long and strong history of working with the financial sector and this has enabled us to become experts. A huge number of our cases are international in their nature.
Integral to our success is our ability to respond to crime at any time; this is evident in the case of Kwame Adoboli, the City trader who lost £1.4m of Swiss Bank UBS’s money. The City of London Police was alerted to the fraud in the early hours of the morning and within an hour provided a direct and decisive response. Adoboli was arrested at 3.35am on the morning the crime was reported and was put before a court within 48 hours. We then conducted an intensive criminal investigation, drawing on specialist expertise within our Economic Crime Directorate, to bring this complex case to court, resulting in a significant custodial sentence.
The Future
Services offered by the NFIB will be enhanced, focusing on the prevention of economic crime through data sharing. This work will include the provision of data feeds to the National Crime Agency’s intelligence hub, the government’s Counter Fraud Checking Service (CFCS) and its new Universal Credits service.
We continue to work with our international partners to increase effective working relationships to conquer international and cross border investigations of serious and complex fraud crime. We have successfully implemented extensive Joint Working Agreements with international police forces and are working closely with the new National Crime Agency to shape the concept of this type of investigation in the future.
It is important that momentum is maintained, and the development of the counter fraud intelligence sharing architecture continues, including all key partner agencies and organisations. It is only by doing this that we will have the ability to combine our knowledge of fraud with intelligence and investigative opportunities to detect and prevent fraud far more effectively.
Commander Steve Head Economic Crime Directorate City of London Police
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