Fraud News

An investigation carried out on behalf of Selby District Council has led to the council’s first prosecution for illegal subletting under social housing legislation.

A man living in York previously held a council tenancy in Tadcaster between 2011 and 2017. An anonymous referral was received by the council that he had been unlawfully subletting his council property after moving to York in 2015. 

A huge achievement for our counter fraud team.

The first social care fraud prosecuted by Veritau and City of York Council has reached its conclusion in court. A man from York has been given a 20 month suspended sentence, 80 hours of unpaid work and an order to pay the council more than £1,100 in costs, for a fraud depriving the public purse of over £86k.

A business rates scam has been doing the rounds again, targeting empty business premises. The scam sees someone register themselves as liable for business rates with the local authority, and pay the bill with a stolen credit card. The fraudster applies with a fake name and company, but they will sometimes register with Companies House to make it seem more legitimate.

After a few organisations in the area have been victims of mandate fraud, including a local wildlife sanctuary, our audit manager Stuart shares an important reminder about internal controls.

Fraud support officers are vital to the work the counter fraud team does. Deborah has been a support officer for 10 years, and started just after Veritau was formed back in 2009. Her role involves seeing a large number of cases at the initial referral stage, responding to and quality-controlling the referrals before they are passed to the rest of the team.

Jane has been a senior investigator for almost 10 years. She started with a small team that has grown significantly, and the work has diversified into many new fraud areas. The counter fraud team investigates 10 different types of fraud and no two days are the same. Jane started working at City of York Council in 2000 as a benefit assessor and moved to their fraud team in 2002.

Ben, the fraud team’s data analytics specialist, has been with Veritau for five years. A large part of his job is working with specialist software IDEA, computer aided auditing tool that allows a trained user to analyse large and complex sets of data. Ben was given a lot of independence with the software to explore how it worked and how Veritau could develop this area to provide greater assurance. After teaching himself much of the software, he attended formal training and became a Certified IDEA Data Analyst.

Ellie has been a trainee fraud investigator with Veritau for almost six months. After graduating with a degree in psychology, she was looking for a career that would challenge her. Training as an investigator keeps things interesting as every day is different. She manages her own case load with a wide range of fraud types.

Veritau has been announced as a finalist at the Tackling Economic Crime Awards (TECAs) 2019. Sponsored by Cifas, the UK’s leader in fraud prevention, the awards recognise those working to combat economic crime and provide an opportunity for outstanding performers in the field to be recognised. We are proud to be nominated alongside teams from HMRC, the Cabinet Office and Serious Fraud Office.

An investigation into a council tax fraud involving forged tenancy agreements has reached its conclusion in court. The individual provided City of York Council with three private tenancy agreements in order to obtain a reduction in her council tax, which were discovered to be forged. All three properties were in the York area.