An anti-fraud scheme run by the Cabinet Office has detected or
prevented more than £2bn of fraud since it was launched 25 years ago,
helping to protect public money and put fraudsters behind bars.
The National Fraud Initiative plays a critical role in
identifying people trying to defraud the public sector, ensuring
taxpayers’ money goes towards delivering vital services, instead
of ending up in the wrong hands.
Cabinet Office Minister, , said:
“The work done by the National Fraud Initiative is keeping
nefarious fingers out of the public purse, protecting funding
which can go towards essential services such as the NHS.
“It’s entirely right that British taxpayers expect the Government
to protect their hard-earned money and programmes such as these
allow us to do exactly that.”
One such case saw the IT manager of an NHS hospital trust sent to
prison for defrauding the Government of £800,000 - the equivalent
of 16 nurses’ wages for a year. His criminal activity was
detected thanks to the work of the NFI and its collaborators on
the case, the Local Counter Fraud Specialist (RSM), the NHS
Counter Fraud Authority and HMRC.
Senior Investigator at the NHS Counter Fraud Authority,
Ben Rowe, said:
“The National Fraud Initiative was key in identifying a serious
fraud being perpetrated by someone in a position of trust who was
stealing large sums of money intended for essential NHS services.
“The scheme offers an excellent example of collaborative working
between government agencies being done right.”
Another case discovered one man fraudulently claimed more than
£40,000 of incapacity benefit, income support and council tax
benefits. After this was detected by the NFI, further
investigation found he owned several small businesses, had
savings of more than £100,000 and owned a Mercedes Benz complete
with personalised number plates.
Since it was established in 1996, the NFI has also helped public
bodies prevent more than £300m of Council Tax discount scams,
£370m of housing benefit fraud, almost £850m of pension payments
being made in error and has taken more than 183,000 fraudulently
claimed disabled parking badges out of circulation.
The work being done by the NFI to keep fraudsters out of the
public purse has recently been recognised by the UK Fintech
Awards, where they picked up Data Initiative of the Year for
their industry-leading use of data.
NHS IT Manager Case study
Data matching enabled by the NFI identified an IT manager working
for a hospital trust who was also a sole director of two shell
companies.
The directorships had not been declared so an investigation by
the Local Counter Fraud Specialist (RSM), the NHS Counter Fraud
Authority and HMRC followed.
Investigations revealed that the employee had filed non-trading
accounts for both companies during their existence. However, he
then produced fraudulent invoices, all under his own £7,500
authorisation limit, and sent them by email from his fictional
employees, to obtain £674,000 from the trust.
He even added VAT of £132,000 to make the invoices more
plausible. A dismissal and prosecution followed and he was
sentenced to five years and four months imprisonment.
Confiscation proceedings are underway to try to recover the
funds.
