AWARD WINNERS GALLERY 2023

  • DSI Cybercrime Team

    HMRC - WINNER: Team of the Year Award 2023

  • Integrated Risk and Intelligence Service

    Department for Work and Pensions - WINNER: Diversity and Inclusion Award 2023

  • George Loosley

    Senior Risk Assessor, Fraud Team, Department for Education - WINNER: GCFP Member of the Year 2023

  • Macmillan Cancer Support Counter Fraud Team / EMM

    - WINNER: Public/Private Partnership Excellence Award 2023

  • Hertfordshire Shared Anti-Fraud Service

    - WINNER: Local Excellence Award 2023

  • Nick Sharp

    Fraud Manager, Newham Council - WINNER: Fraud Leadership Award 2023

  • DSI Cybercrime Team

    HMRC - WINNER: Risk & Prevention Award 2023

  • DC Richard Gentile

    Cyber Crime Unit. British Transport Police - WINNER: Apprentice or Newcomer of the Year 2023

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DC Richard Gentile

Cyber Crime Unit. British Transport Police

WINNER: Apprentice or Newcomer of the Year 2023

What outstanding contribution has the Apprentice / Newcomer displayed since joining the Counter Fraud sector?

DC Richard Gentile joined the Cyber Crime unit in 2021 as a Cyber Protect Officer and over the last two years, he has single headedly achieved some outstanding results whilst supporting the work of 11 other fellow investigators.

He has developed an innovative Cyber Champions Programme to aid with internal advice to the British Transport Police and external businesses raising awareness advice around fraud and cyber enabled fraud. As a result, uniformed officers can now confidently support the rail industry and its partners in becoming more aware of types of fraud and cybercrime threats to prevent from becoming victims. He has frequently liaised at government level (NCSC, DFT, NCCU, NCA), with all 50 UK train and freight operating companies (and its extensive supply chain) to build awareness around cybercrime and Cyber enabled fraud to keep our critical national infrastructure safe from the growing threat of fraud.

Richard takes a very different method to educating the railway network and its supply chain, adopting an immersive approach and use of gamified learning to teach people about fraud, covering a range of threats including romance fraud, courier fraud, PDF fraud, etc.

He acts as a mentor for individuals interested in cybercrime and fraud prevention, with his training reaching over 6000 people through in-person talks, webinars, as well presenting to corporate companies directly and indirectly related to the railway including SME’s, charities and Universities. Richard is passionately dedicated to raising awareness around cybercrime and fraud in his own time and is often recognised for his hard work and dedication.

When comparing statistics just over the last three months alone from previous years in relation to disruption around major crime they have almost doubled showing a significant impact on organised crime groups.

Integrated Risk and Intelligence Service

Department for Work and Pensions

WINNER: Diversity and Inclusion Award 2023

How have the Team / Department initiated and led on actions to remove barriers, improve the working experience or enabled talented employees from underrepresented groups to realise their potential.

As part of the IRIS Diversity & Inclusion Plan we have set up a Race Focus Group, bringing together a diverse range of colleagues from across the teams to identify barriers to progression, inequality, and cultural myths, and to tackle these with tangible actions.

The plan has led to a series of listening circles run within IRIS covering the difference between faiths, atheism, and other cultural subjects. At the request of our colleagues we have carried out further conversations about neurodiversity, transgenderism, deafness, adoption, mental heath and others. The feedback we have received confirms these are enlightening, and help colleagues understand the challenges and stereotypical assumptions about these subjects.

We have also started a programme across our teams where people honestly talk about themselves, called ‘Manual of Me’. This allows us to talk about how we like or don’t like to receive information, how we learn, what we love, and what we dislike, with a history of our work life and skills, and what we can teach to others. It has led to a deeper understanding of how and why we work the way we do, and has changed how we work with each other, taking account of the stated preferences.

One of our key priorities in IRIS is to encourage staff to consider progression and promotion. We have set up spot mentoring sessions, aimed at those underrepresented at the higher grades, to share career journeys and give advice about development and progression.

George Loosley

Senior Risk Assessor, Fraud Team, Department for Education

WINNER: GCFP Member of the Year 2023

How does the nominee demonstrate a strong commitment to the Counter Fraud profession?

George has been committed to counter fraud since starting with DfE 5 years ago. His commitment to the department and his role extends far beyond counter fraud but his desire to support and develop the profession is exceptional. 

George undertook the pilot Fraud Risk Assessment Training, providing feedback to ensure issues were improved for those who follow. Since then, he has exemplified dedication to the profession by promoting the course with internal and external colleagues, working diligently to the standard and volunteering his services to other Government Departments who have not developed an FRA function with the speed and efficiency that he has.

DfE has a high percentage of the overall grants across government and those now fall into George’s sphere of responsibility. He has used his professional expertise to deliver FRA’s to the value of £3.3 billion of government funding, resulting in reduced risk of fraud and error in those grants. He also developed a suite of tools, guidance and templates that assist the department to deliver its grand funding in a secure method regardless of the overall value or risk levels.

George identified the need for the DFE to have a professional and resilient FRA response during COVID-19. He was able to convince senior management to invest in extra posts to lead the FRA delivery against circa £10 bn of departmental funding; and has now personally delivered more than 30 FRA’s to an exceptional standard and in a far quicker timescale than we had hoped for. 

Longer-term he has prepared a strategy for future FRA delivery, ensuring record keeping, follow ups, metrics and KPI’s are all strategically recorded sorted and reviewed to maximise their value. This has since been adapted or adopted by a number of other government departments, saving them much needed time and resource. 

 George managed to insert his team as a keyholder of grants business cases, meaning that no new FRA initiatives could be signed off without the requisite level of FRA product attached. Ensuring that funding was safeguarded PRIOR to being spent rather than the retrospective assurance that was more prevalent across government. 

Nick Sharp

Fraud Manager, Newham Council

WINNER: Fraud Leadership Award 2023

Provide an example of how the nominee has demonstrated outstanding leadership and is a deserving candidate of the award.

Nick has transformed our counter fraud services. When he was appointed to the post we were still near the height of the pandemic and there wasn’t much of a team in place. Two years on and Nick has built a really high-performing team. Nick has empowered the team to question how we can do things more efficiently and speed up the process of regaining Newham assets and we are currently working to progress their suggestions.

Nick is also keen to invest in future Counter Fraud talent and is a member of the Apprenticeship Trailblazing Working Group led by the Cabinet Office which has seen him employing an Apprentice within his own team.  

74.2% of Newham’s residents are from a minority ethnic background and Nick’s vision was to build and inclusive team which better represents the population which we serve. Nick is a keen advocate of Newham’s ‘tackling racism, inequality and disproportionality’ programme and has ensured that his whole team has attended the workshops and training provided. Nick also recognises the increased pressures put on the workforce both during lockdown and more recently, the cost of living crises and has voluntarily trained to become a mental first aider to support wellbeing for colleagues across the Council. 

Nick’s proactive attitude has resulted in notional savings of £2m to the Council, through stopping unlawful Right to Buy applications and illegal subletting. Despite resource constraints colleagues from across the Council approach him asking how the team could do more for them, because they know that there will be a real return on their investment, and Nick is well-respected by senior management and by the audit committee.

Hertfordshire Shared Anti-Fraud Service

WINNER: Local Excellence Award 2023

What was the project about and what did it achieve for the local area?

SAFS were able to work at pace to screen businesses before SBFG and RHLGF grant funding was distributed – preventing fraud whilst ensuring that genuine businesses entitled to grant funding received it quickly. In total SAFS analysed 10,350 grant applications and found potential discrepancies or anomalies in 1,445 cases, which officers then proceeded to conduct manual open-source checks on. This analysis helped further establish that the businesses and officers attached to them were genuine. 

This due diligence work ensured that our partners had full confidence in the disbursement of grants to local businesses. Furthermore, councils were able to cleanse their local business records and now have full sight of businesses not eligible for SBRR within their boundaries which has allowed them to collect extra revenue.

Non-trading businesses have been removed from SBRR records meaning future frauds – whereby dormant business are adopted or have their identity hi-jacked by fraudsters – can be prevented. 

SAFS became an intelligence hub, receiving and disseminating intelligence on new and emerging threats where organised crime groups used the pandemic to target authorities with fraudulent applications for grant funding. 

Our proactive work has ensured that new businesses have also now been recorded. This is an essential feed of data, since there is no obligation on new businesses with premises opening to inform local authorities that they have done so and often remote locations for businesses, such as farm shops, are not visited by council officers and can go unnoticed for many years. 

The exercise enabled our partners to accurately report the volume and depth of checks undertaken when reporting their Post Event Assurance Plan to BEIS in late 2020. 

DSI Cybercrime Team

HMRC

WINNER: Team of the Year 2023

Describe the initiative and its key objectives and any innovative aspects that have led to its success and prevented fraud in the public sector.

HMRC identified the growth of criminal gangs using social media platforms to enable attacks on the digital tax system. Relying on the anonymity offered by these platforms, they trade fraud ‘methods’ (step-by-step guides) and share evidence of their successes.

The HMRC FIS Cybercrime team was uniquely placed to tackle this issue, having recently undergone a restructure to combine cyber security, forensic and investigation experts into a single team to tackle organised fraud. The team tactically investigates online crimes to provide insight into criminal techniques and methods, informing countermeasures and strategies to counter fraud at scale, including:

Step 1: Identify criminal communities focusing on fraud against HMRC, specifically the most visible and popular influencing others

Step 2: Identify the administrators, or if unachievable within a fixed time, identify other prominent members inciting others.

Step 3: Through coordinated arrests, issue press releases about interventions, aiming to destabilise those communities and show the consequences of their activity.

Step 4: Create an overt HMRC Counter Fraud profile on the fraudster’s favourite social media platform for recruiting. Post on criminals’ social media profiles to counter the “risk-free” message, making it clear to viewers that the activity is criminal and there are consequences

Step 5: Send direct messages to followers of fraud profiles as HMRC, warning them of the consequences of collaborating and letting them know we’re watching.

Step 6: Request removal of the fraudulent profiles from the social media platform. Criminals are reliant on social media for a source of genuine identities to create new tax accounts for fraud. Tackling the most visible orchestrators of this fraud and deterring the curious public from engaging with these groups, our objective was to disrupt and degrade the effectiveness of their business model by cutting off their supply of identities.

Macmillan Cancer Support Counter Fraud Team / EMM (Edmonds Marshall McMahon)

WINNER: Public/Private Partnership Excellence Award 2023

Please give details of the project or partnership that was designed and delivered

Reporting ‘white collar’ crime to the Police has become increasingly difficult due to resourcing, therefore Macmillan Cancer Support introduced and piloted a Private Criminal Prosecution Project during 2019 in partnership with the law firm, Edmonds Marshall McMahon (EMM), London, in an effort to obtain successful criminal prosecutions, becoming the first charity to introduce such an initiative.

In brief: a full investigation is conducted by Macmillan, which includes contacting the suspect at an early stage to enquire about their fundraising efforts, gathering evidence and drafting any witness statements. Cases are submitted to our legal partners at EMM for their consideration/advice and to ensure that an independent and objective analysis of the evidence is carried out. They apply the Full Code Test to the evidence that has been obtained and a prosecution will only be commenced if there is sufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction. Although the Police and Crown Prosecution Service are not involved, all cases have to be proven ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ just as for a criminal case brought by the Police.

Following their scrutiny, EMM submit a case summary to the Magistrates’ Court, local to where the offence took place, and obtain a summons which EMM issue to the defendant informing them of the offence and court date.

DSI Cybercrime Team

HMRC

WINNER: Risk & Prevention Award 2023

Please describe the team and how they have worked to improve mitigating fraud practices over the past 12 months

The Cybercrime team is a small, multidisciplinary team of 20, working collaboratively across four functions: criminal justice professionals specialising in cybercrime, technical specialists in digital forensics, data analytics, strategy and risk mitigation, and an engineering team developing specialist tools to support the mission. 

Over the past 12 months, the team have been working tirelessly to focus their efforts on viral threats exploiting the reach of social media and implementing a strategy to tackle them. The team have identified, reviewed over 100 threats to HMRC, triaging these to select examples of the most visible and influential online fraud groups to understand their methods and disrupt their activity. Building on the success of two major days of action in 2022, where multiple coordinated arrests were made across the UK, activity has moved into a new phase: a direct messaging campaign of criminals and their followers on social media. 

 The team’s investigations have provided real-time visibility of criminals across HMRC systems and the online communities they operate, enabling the sharing of actionable intelligence with wider HMRC teams to prevent monetary loss from fraud using their methodologies. This has saved £Millions from those groups alone and provided insight into how fraudsters are bypassing HMRC’s identity verification checks. This included the online recruitment of people willing to provide their identity for money, which prompted an innovative pilot exercise to reduce this source of identities the fraudsters rely upon. Operating an overt HMRC Counter Fraud social media profile, the team are posting warning comments on criminals’ promotional accounts and messaging their followers about the dangers and consequences of collaboration. By undermining the fraudsters’ claims of risk-free cash, and direct contact with those they seek to convince, we are leveraging the same platforms they exploit to degrade the success their business model. 

That theme is just one of many the team covers. Its Research & Development work, particularly around covert data acquisition, has not only supported Cybercrime and HMRC organised crime objectives, but its value and contribution are recognised across government and the wider Law Enforcement community.