Counter-fraud

Highways England counter fraud officers are understood to have spent two days on the site of the M1 smart motorway project running from junction 13 near Milton Keynes to junction 16 near Northampton.

https://www.constructionenquirer.com/2021/06/01/highways-counter-fraud-team-probes-m1-smart-motorway-job/

Working from home is now the norm for so many people, but with one in ten employees still wanting a remote lifestyle for the foreseeable future, what does that mean for employers and what exactly are the risks?

https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/are-you-protected-against-work-from-home-fraud/111651/

Over £63m was lost nationally to investment fraud across 5,039 reports that referred to a social media platform in 2020/21, according to Action Fraud.

https://pensionsage.com/pa/63m-lost-social-media-based-investment-scams-over-202021.php

While we’ve all been distracted about the Covid-19 pandemic, an epidemic of a very different kind has been flourishing.

https://metro.co.uk/2021/05/25/how-fraud-can-impact-businesses-and-where-to-get-help-14632006/?ito=article.desktop.share.top.twitter

Money mules are a hot topic in fraud prevention circles these days. But wait a minute, isn't that more of an AML issue? I mean the literal definition of money laundering is "concealing the origins of illegally obtained money". That's money muling to a T. However, when you look across the lifecycle of muling activity, it becomes more complex. And when it comes to categorizing money mules within a specific fraud/AML use case, mules indeed have an identity crisis.

https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/20358/money-mules---an-identity-crisis

There has been a sharp drop in crime during stay-at-home directives and social isolation. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said his city hasn’t seen such low levels of crime “since the 1950s.”

https://losspreventionmedia.com/post-pandemic-employee-fraud/

We’re living in a golden age for financial crimes and it’s a good time to be a bad actor. Among the many potentials for crime is stimulus fraud – such as what occurred last year with the major stimulus packages passed in response to the pandemic. In 2020 alone, fraudsters siphoned off $36 billion meant for unemployed Americans, and Californian authorities are investigating the possibility that nearly $11 billion was stolen by criminals making fraudulent claims. While unemployment fraud happens elsewhere in the world as well, the sheer scale of the U.S.’s reactive social stimulus structure is a perfect storm for theft.

https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/20328/where-the-covid-19-stimulus-fraud-risks-are--and-how-to-stop-them

Alongside a massive shift to digital payments, 2020 has seen a dramatic rise in online fraud. The Confirmation of Payee (CoP) was just one industry initiative introduced to combat this disturbing trend but its adoption has been slow and the PSR had to intervene with mandated deadlines.

https://thefintechtimes.com/bottomline-stopping-the-rise-of-payments-fraud/

Financial crime prevention is a major concern for lenders planning to make the switch to working from home (WFH) more permanent. But John Dobson of SmartSearch says it could in fact present an opportunity to streamline your anti-money laundering (AML) processes

https://www.mortgagefinancegazette.com/features/aml-must-lenders-shifting-wfh-13-05-2021/

The Covid-19 pandemic put businesses on the hot seat with consumers abandoning the local high street for the global digital marketplace, causing society to undergo a sudden “digital acceleration” – a once-in-a-generation event whereby our dependence on technology has been expedited by over a decade, if not more, in the span of a single year. Overnight, organizations have had to build the solutions needed to support the verification of identity, transactions, and interactions.

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/the-aftermath-of-2020-navigating-the-next-normal-against-fraud