Accounting concerns sparked investigation into massive employee fraud
12 Oct 2023The Office Manager of a property firm stole more than £900,000 from her employers over almost three years and was eventually caught after concerns emerged over company accounting activity. Emma Hunt lied to friends about the source of her ‘income’ and, in an attempt to buy their affection, treated them to parties, hospitality at sporting […]
Long and complex investigation results in charges
03 Oct 2023The former Chief Financial Officer of Patisserie Valerie, Christopher Marsh and three other former employees have been charged with conspiracy to defraud. Mr Marsh, his wife, accountant Louise Marsh, Financial Controller Pritesh Mistry and financial consultant, Nileshkumar Lad, have been charged by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) with conspiring to inflate the cash in Patisserie […]
Accounting concerns sparked investigation into massive employee fraud
15 Sep 2023The Office Manager of a property firm stole more than £900,000 from her employers over almost three years and was eventually caught after concerns emerged over company accounting activity. Emma Hunt lied to friends about the source of her ‘income’ and, in an attempt to buy their affection, treated them to parties, hospitality at sporting […]
Lifestyle changes provide clues to fraud
12 Sep 2023A grandmother from Aberdeen is facing a custodial sentence for stealing more than £1.5 million from her employer by putting fake payments through to a bogus supplier but paying herself. Coleen Muirhead started work at scrap metal merchants Panda Rosa Metals in 2014 and has admitted to carrying out the thefts between 2015 and 2021. […]
Singer Shakira faces second tax fraud investigation in Spain
04 Sep 2023Award-winning Colombian singer Shakira is facing a new investigation into alleged tax fraud in Spain after a court agreed with the Barcelona Economic Crimes Prosecutors to look into two more possible cases. The singer is already set to face trial for allegedly failing to pay £12.6 million in taxes on income earned between 2012 and […]
Property seized in bid to control ‘dirty money’
25 Aug 2023Convicted fraudster, Gulnara Karimova, once dubbed the Uzbek princess’, has had three luxury properties confiscated by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO). According to the SFO, Karimova received hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes from telecommunications companies between 2004 and 2012 in return for helping them gain access to the market in Uzbekistan. An investigation […]
£20 million Ponzi scheme closed down
18 Aug 2023A fraudster who ran a £20 million Ponzi scheme has been found guilty of fraud, false accounting and forgery after abusing millions of pounds of investors’ money to buy racehorses and fund other businesses. He was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment and remains disqualified as a Director. Liam Wainwright, a director of Rawdon Asset Finance […]
Solar farm investment bankrupts Thurrock Council
14 Aug 2023Thurrock Council has been effectively bankrupted after a local businessman convinced the local authority to invest tens of millions of pounds before going on a spending spree with the cash. Liam Kavanagh persuaded Thurrock council to hand over the equivalent of almost its entire annual budget in an investment in his group of solar farms. […]
COVID-support abuse accounts for half of all Director bans
07 Aug 2023According to figures from the Insolvency Service, more than half of all company Directors struck off in the past 15 months were involved in alleged fraud or abuse of COVID-19 financial support schemes. The Government is clamping down on such fraudsters, and the figures also show that Directors guilty of coronavirus-related misconduct are facing lengthy […]
Post Office compensation scheme a “patchwork quilt with holes in it”
01 Aug 2023A report on the Post Office scandal, which led to hundreds of sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses being wrongly accused of crimes, has described compensation schemes set up to support those impacted as a “patchwork quilt with some holes in it”. Between 2000 and 2014, 736 managers of local Post Office branches around the UK were convicted […]
OECD guidelines to impact multinational businesses
24 Jul 2023The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has revised its guidance for multinational businesses to reflect the increasingly complex world in which they operate. The 2023 OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct is the first refresh of the body’s recommendations for 12 years. The updates reflect current social, political and environmental issues, aligning […]
Appeal against Libor rate conviction
19 Jul 2023The first trader to be jailed for “rigging” interest rates over the Libor rate scandal has just won the right to appeal his conviction after an eight-year battle to clear his name. Tom Hayes, a former top-performing UBS and Citigroup employee will be taking his case to the Court of Appeal following a decision by […]
Cross-border “missing trader” investigation
07 Jul 2023Five suspects have been arrested in connection with a €38 million VAT fraud following a Europol-supported investigation. The investigation, code-named Huracán, was led by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Cologne after they discovered a large VAT fraud scheme concerning the international trade of more than 10,000 cars. The investigation started with a report […]
In defence of innocence: The ongoing SNP investigation
05 Jul 2023The investigation into the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) finances has moved on since it began in July 2021, following claims that around £660,000 raised since 2017 for a second independence referendum campaign had been used for unrelated expenses. In April this year, former SNP Chief Executive Peter Murrell, husband of former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, […]
Whistleblowing sparks investigation
23 Jun 2023A police investigation is underway concerning alleged fraud and conspiracy offences carried out by four members of Neyland Town Council and a paid employee. Earlier this month, the Deputy Mayor, Steve Thomas, announced the investigation at an Extraordinary Meeting of the Council, which is located in Pembrokeshire, Wales. The local government monitoring officer was also […]
The cost of employee fraud
20 Jun 2023Recent figures suggest that theft at work in England and Wales has increased by 19 per cent amid the rising cost of living. The research, which was based on police data gathered from a freedom of information request, found that almost 6,000 employees were caught stealing from their workplace in 2022, compared to 5,000 the […]
National crackdown on fraud leads to large seizure of assets
02 Jun 2023More than £6 million of assets were seized or restrained in a month-long, national crackdown on fraud by UK crimefighters. Operation Henhouse, a national fraud intensification campaign, saw police forces, regional organised crime units (ROCUs) and the National Crime Agency (NCA), target a variety of offences, including banking and insurance fraud, as well as money […]
Failure to prevent fraud offence – how forensic accountants can help
25 May 2023The UK is set to introduce a new criminal offence of ‘failure to prevent fraud’ as part of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill. Under the new offence, an organisation will be liable where a specified fraud offence is committed by an employee or agent, for the organisation’s benefit, and the organisation did not […]
Businesses still not reporting fraud, according to latest report
19 May 2023A recent report has found that one in five UK companies fell victim to fraud between 2018 and 2020 but most of them did not report it to the police. According to the report by the Home Office, written in 2020 but only published in early May this year, there are ‘high levels of repeat […]
Post Office Horizon scandal back in the news
12 May 2023The decision to award a £5.7 million contract that will create a new emergency alert system for the Government to Fujitsu has been branded “immoral” by peers. This is because of the scandal around Fujitsu’s Horizon system, which was used by the Post Office between 1999 and 2015 for transactions, accounting and stocktaking. However, it […]
UK’s largest fraud investigation leads to important prosecution
04 May 2023A man has pleaded guilty to running a website that allowed criminals and fraudsters to appear as if they were calling from banks, tax offices and other official bodies in an attempt to defraud victims. Tejay Fletcher ran a website called iSpoof, which allowed criminals to pretend to be workers at banks and tax offices. […]
SNP urged to bring in forensic accountants
26 Apr 2023A former Scottish National Party (SNP) Minister has called for a forensic investigation into the Party’s finances following the resignation of its long-time auditors, Johnston Carmichael. Alex Neil has called on new SNP First Minister, Humza Yousaf to “get to the bottom of this” and then “move on”. Mr Yousaf confirmed that Johnston Carmichael resigned […]
Sharing of wealth in divorce to be reviewed
26 Apr 2023Justice Minister Lord Christopher Bellamy has said that he plans to ask the Law Commission to examine whether the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 needs updating. The current law is, in the words of celebrated divorce lawyer Baroness Shackleton, “hopelessly out of date”. This is hardly surprising, as the rules are 50 years old and were […]
First conviction for eat out to help out fraud
13 Apr 2023A former Keighley councillor has become the first individual to be jailed for making fraudulent claims under the Government’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme. Mohammed Ikram was sentenced to two-and-a-half years for making claims totalling £434,073 for eight different food outlets over four weeks. Under the terms of the scheme, food outlets were offered […]
Wealthy individuals targeted by HMRC
11 Apr 2023It has been revealed recently that HM Revenue & Customs’ (HMRC) Offshore Corporate and Wealthy (OCW) unit opened 25 criminal investigations into wealthy individuals during 2022. The OCW is part of HMRC’s Fraud Investigation Service (FIS), which was set up following the Panama Papers leak in 2016. The unit’s brief is to target deliberate high-value […]