Much has changed, but some things stay the same, says Alan Day, who next month is chairing his eighth and final London Fraud Forum annual conference.
He told Professional Security ahead of the October 9 event: “Fraud continues to cause deep harm to our society. Fraud is no longer a ‘white collar’ crime – if ever it was – and now fraudsters prey on all of society and in particular the old and vulnerable through scams such as boiler house and courier frauds. But counter-fraud has moved on. There has been new legislation; new initiatives, with the birth and recent demise of the National Fraud Authority; greater emphasis on fraud, error and debt by central Government; and the more recent creation of the Single Fraud Investigation Service in the public sector. Law enforcement has changed and continues to do so; as evidenced by the new economic crime command at the National Crime Agency (NCA).
“But one thing has remained constant, and that is the need for us all in the counter-fraud community to work together, to defeat this pervasive threat.” Topics on the day include prosecution (by Jane de Lozey, head of fraud at the Serious Fraud Office); the NCA; procurement fraud, cyber-crime (a talk by Jason Hart of SafeNet), biometrics, the ‘investigative psychology of fraud’, and a police case study of the nine-figure cyber-attack on a Barclays bank branch at Swiss Cottage, north London in April 2013.
Visit www.londonfraudforum.co.uk.
