This guide is for directors and senior managers of housing associations in England and Wales and their professional advisers. It is written specifically to help you understand, prevent and detect fraud, and it provides information about what you should do if a fraud is discovered. It can also be used to educate staff about the warning signs and the potential risks of fraud. The guide includes details of other sources of information, support and best practice.

https://www.fraudadvisorypanel.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Tackling-fraud-in-the-social-housing-sector-December2015.pdf

Public Wi-Fi access is a ubiquitous part of networked life in the modern internet. Wi-Fi hotspots provide fast and convenient internet access for the general public at locations such as coffee shops, libraries and community centres, transportation hubs, and private commercial/social spaces. However public Wi-Fi also provides cyber criminals with a number of convenient attack routes which have been well documented by security researchers.

http://www.midlandsfraudforum.co.uk:80/resources/Documents/Alerts/Public%20Wifi.pdf

Don’t Look, Won’t Find: Weaknesses In The Supervision Of The UK’s Anti-Money Laundering Rules - The system that should prevent dirty money from entering the UK is failing. Billions of pounds of corrupt funds are pouring into the country every year. A radical overhaul of the UK’s anti-money laundering system is needed to stem the flow of corrupt money and help prevent UK professionals from being unwitting facilitators of, or indeed, corrupted by, vast sums of money stolen from around the world.

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The real price of fake products. Whatever they may be – fakes, counterfeits, or forgeries or items which don’t meet the standards imposed to protect us all – illicit products are offered with the intention to defraud and deceive. Not only do they mislead, pretending to be what they are not, not only are they of much poorer quality than the originals, but they can also pose threats to your health and security.

(from page 55) The measurement of fraud is challenging as it is a deceptive crime which is difficult to detect accurately and is often targeted at organisations as well as individuals. It is known to be underreported to the authorities and difficult to measure using a household survey. Fraud data from a range of administrative sources are presented in the quarterly statistical bulletins on crime in England and Wales to provide a more complete picture.

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The Committee’s Fourth Report of this Session, published October 28 2015, examines fraud and error in the payment of benefits and tax credits – a significant and long-standing problem. The high levels of fraud and error scrutinised by the Public Accounts Committee are a matter of great concern. Put simply, far too much taxpayers’ money has gone where it shouldn’t – and too little where it should. 

The introduction of sophisticated technology has brought about a step-change in the way economic crime is committed – enabling frauds to be perpetrated at scale, at great speed, and at a distance, with no physical contact necessary between criminal and victim. It can be much harder to identify the individuals initiating crime, and often the location will be outside UK jurisdiction. These factors have resulted in a sharp escalation of such activities in recent years, bringing new challenges for policing and industry in preventing and tackling such crime.

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  NTS (National Trading Standards) is responsible for gathering important intelligence from around the country to combat criminal activity and tackle a number of priorities. These priorities currently include mass marketing and internet scams, illegal money lending and other enforcement issues that affect consumers and businesses beyond traditional local authority boundaries. In this report NTS presents a range of insight and data based on its 2014-15 Annual Report, which analyses results for the last measurable full year across the NTS teams and additional work areas. This first ever Consumer Harm Report, gives everyone a sense of the types of crimes that exist, to enable people to understand some of the present and emerging threats and help give people the confidence to report unscrupulous behaviour.

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For the first time, the courts will have comprehensive guidance to help them to sentence the great variety of offending and offenders that come before them. Until now, some common types of theft such as theft of a motor vehicle or bicycle, have had to be sentenced using guidelines for similar offences – these guidelines now bring together specific guidance on these offences. While the value of items stolen remains an important factor in sentencing these offences, the guidelines will bring a clear focus on the impact of thefts on victims beyond financial loss. These offences can cause emotional distress, loss of confidence and great disruption and inconvenience. The guidelines take account of this and set out a comprehensive assessment of the harm to the victim.

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Using the 2014 report as a baseline, this assessment covers the key developments, changes and emerging threats in the field of cybercrime for the period under consideration. It offers a view predominantly from a law enforcement perspective based on contributions by EU Member States and the expert input of Europol staff, which has been further enhanced and combined with input from private industry, the financial sector and academia.

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