Mr Coaker stressed the importance of the National Fraud Strategic Authority (NFSA) which will create a nationwide policy of fraud. The NFSA will oversee the National Fraud Reporting Centre and National Fraud Intelligence Bureau will aims to improve the intelligence available to law enforcement, enabling more targeted operations.

Also mentioned in the speech is support for Fraud Data Sharing, which Mr Coaker said is: "crucial to tackling fraud".

The speech also mentions two new initiatives; the Policing Green Paper and a new campaign from APACS, IMRG and the BRC. Mr Coaker urged retailers to get behind the campaign which aims to raise awareness of using cards online safely, whilst stressing that shopping online is convenient and safe.

The full speech transcript is available here.

The forum brings together fraud professionals for a day of intelligence sharing, including a series of fascinating presentations, a merchant panel discussion and networking opportunities.

Highlights of the day included a presentation from DC Shaun McLeary of the National Terrorist Finance Intelligence Unit who showed how CNP fraud and money laundering can fund terrorist activity.

The forum also heard how retailers can work together with the police to deter and prevent fraud, and heard about the successes of past joint projects.

Thankfully, the weather was in our favour allowing delegates to catch some of the action from the Surrey vs. Nottinghamshire match during breaks.

RBS gave their insight into fraud and age verification challenges, adding an acquirer’s perspective to the day’s discussion.

The group also heard from special guest speaker Vernon Coaker, Under Secretary of State for Crime Reduction. Mr Coaker re-affirmed his support for the fraud community, recognizing the problems faced by e-commerce operators; and encouraged those in attendance to study the latest Home Office consultation; the Policing Green Paper.

The Merchant Panel session always proves popular, and this year’s panel consisted of Otto, Panasonic and PKR.com who provided their insight as well as answering questions from the audience.

192 would like to thank all of our guest speakers and panelists, and all those who attended for contributing towards making Prove-ID a success.

The fraud involved mobile phones being shipped in order to fraudulently claim up to an estimated £600 billion, laundered through a Caribbean bank.

Carousel Fraud, occurs when a fraudster takes advantage of VAT rules in the EU.
Because cross border trade is not subject to VAT, exporters can reclaim the VAT charges from the government, however in carousel fraud trades are usually virtual or the last company in the chain selling the goods disappears, meaning the exchequer is left out of pocket. In this case, the same mobile phones were sent back and forth across borders, with tax fraudulently reclaimed each time.

As well as defrauding the tax system this fraud case, also allowed anonymous money laundering; and could have been used to launder the proceeds of crime.

It is believed that this is one of the biggest ‘carousel fraud’ money laundering to be broken and a total of £51 million has been recovered from First Curacao International Bank, which was itself forced to close in 2006 as a result of an Anglo-Dutch criminal investigation.

You can find more information on money laundering solutions here.

The report shows that companies lost an average of $8.2million to fraud over the past 3 years; an increase on 2007 figures which put losses at $7.6million.

Identity theft id the fastest growing type of fraud, accounting for 27% of losses, with regulatory and compliance breaches also increasing; up 5% to account for 22% of all losses.

The increase in business fraud will no doubt be blamed on the current economic climate, and this is supported by the construction and natural resources industries suffering the most incidents of fraud.

Perhaps also reflecting the recent woes in the holiday industry, the travel, leisure and transport sector reported the highest increase in regulatory and compliance breaches.

Of the ten categories that have been tracked in the survey, only money laundering and procurement fraud saw a decline in reported fraud; although the figures put the decline at 1% each.

Blake Coppotelli, Senior Managing Director at Kroll’s Business Intelligence & Investigations division said: “The findings show that fraud is not only widespread, but also growing and we expect to see this increase further as conditions become tougher for business and the full impact of the credit crunch unfolds.”

The full report can be found here.

Congressman Barney Frank, has introduced the Payments System Protection Act of 2008, in a move to create a formal process defining what types of online gambling are unlawful. It is hoped that the move will create more clarity, especially for the payments sector; currently under pressure to help police UIGEA.

The Payments System Protection Act, announced on September 11, would require that federal regulators recruit a special Administrative Law Judge to investigate the impact on the economy of complying with UIGEA, as well as defining what constitutes unlawful gambling.

The move follows the defeat of the first Payments System Protection Act which attempted to block the implementation of UIGEA.

Chairman Frank commented earlier in the year on this situation facing the US payments system, saying: "Hijacking the financial payment system at a time when it is under major stress and giving them the job of carrying out an unclear mandate doesn't make sense," he said.

Barney Frank supports the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act of 2007, which seeks to allow licensed gambling, but includes strict governance to guard against under age gambling, money laundering, identity theft and problem gambling.

The TUFF Board of Directors presented David the award to recognise his contribution in the on-going fight against fraud at the TUFF Annual Conference held on 2-3rd September.

David has been instrumental in leading on a number of initiatives within the fraud prevention arena, including collating the Fraudster’s Modus Operandi, which includes excerpts from interviews with fraudsters to provide insight for fraud prevention professionals. Dave has also helped to pioneer Fraud-ID; 192’s data sharing tool, and has invested time in helping to educate the industry as to the concept and value of sharing fraud data.

192.com are pleased to congratulate David on receiving this award, and would like to thank the TUFF Board of Directors for their recognition of his work.

Last week two men were arrested as part of an investigation into tampered chip and pin terminals. It is believed that criminals have uncovered a way to steal card transaction data as well as the card PIN from the machine. Miniature devices capable of recording and transmitting customer PIN codes remotely to fraudsters. Approximately 30 of the devices have been found and had been sent to forensics for analysis. The news is a blow to the card industry, as chip and pin has been hailed as the safest form of card payment.

A third man was arrested late Friday afternoon, and is believed to have helped engineer the devices. Police hope that he can provide information which will help them determine the size of the risk to retailers, banks and the cardholders themselves.

The head of DCPCU Detective Chief Inspector John Folan, commented: “We are sending a very clear warning to fraudsters these crimes will not be tolerated, and that we will continue to target them and disrupt their fraudulent activity”

Cardholders that have had their details stolen will be protected under the Banking Code, which means that despite the inconvenience, they will not suffer any financial loss.

Remote gambling is classified as betting via a computer, mobile phone or via an interactive TV service, and of a survey of 8,0000 adults, 8.8% of people had participated in remote gambling in the past month.

This figure remained the same as figures for 2007, which was higher than the figure reported for 2006 (7.2%).

Those participating in remote gambling are more likely to be male than female, and are most likely to be aged between 18 and 44, which may explain why age verification is required to be carried out so robustly in the remote gambling sector.

Remote gambling via a computer is unsurprisingly the most popular media for betting, accounting for 6.9% of the 8.8% figure. Gambling via a mobile phone accounted for 2.3% of the media share, beating interactive TV, which was the least popular method at 2%.

The full research can be obtained here.

The biggest reported data loss case, was reported in January, when the Ministry of Defence lost an unencrypted laptop containing 620,000 personal records; including bank account and national insurance numbers. Other data losses have been reported by the Home Office, Ministry of Justice and the Department of Transport.

The four million figure only includes data lost by government departments, and does not include other recently publicized data losses such as data lost by Banks and Building Societies and other organizations. In February last year, Nationwide were fined £980,000 by the FSA for losing a laptop containing 11million customer records.

Colchester University Hospital sacked a member of staff this month, after a disciplinary hearing heard that the staff member took an unsecured laptop containing several thousand patient details on holiday; the laptop was subsequently stolen. Virgin Media have also had to contact 3,000 customers whose details were burnt onto a CD and then lost.

The loss of data means a higher risk of identity fraud, as more and more private information is at higher risk of falling into the wrong hands. Identity verification can be a useful tool in verifying that a customer is really who they say they are, and when multiple characteristics are verified can defend against a fraudster with stolen data but not a complete picture of the stolen identity.

The men involved discovered a loophole which allowed them to pay in worthless cheques, but withdraw cleared funds before the cheques inevitably bounced.

The men then tried to launder the stolen funds using several IT and mobile phone companies created to clean the money under the guise of fake business deals. This process was supported by a number of fake documents created to try and legitimise the money laundering.

The money was then sent on to Latvia, where police in Riga discovered the accounts and informed police in the UK. This then prevented the final integration process which would have involved depositing the money in an account in Dubai.

All six men who appeared in front of Southwark Crown Court were convicted of conspiring to launder money, whilst 3 of the defendants were also found guilty of plotting to produce false instruments for their role in creating false documents.