Gazette - Fraud knows no borders

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

When we read and hear about major scams and fraud, the details are sometimes hard to believe — details about how low criminals will stoop to make money, and how trustful the public can be despite the warnings. The fact is, fraud will never completely disappear. But the goal is to make it more difficult.

In this issue on fraud, we take a look at some of the unscrupulous ways that scam artists make off with what isn’t theirs, and the most effective methods of fighting back.

To begin, our cover story highlights major mass-marketing scams based in Nigeria that use fake cheques to fool victims overseas. The cross-border investigations involve the joint work of law enforcement agencies from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Nigeria. These international partnerships are now the way business must be done to curb fraud, and other crimes too.

We look at the RCMP’s National Anti-Counterfeiting Bureau and the role it plays in analyzing and identifying fake currency and documents seized in investigations. The bureau has recently changed its mandate to provide advice to agencies outside the police arena — a role that is welcome and needed.

The RCMP-led Integrated Security Unit (ISU) for the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Vancouver was established to examine the complex security matter for that international event. With over $3.1 billion projected for construction, the ISU’s special financial intelligence unit was formed to protect public and private funds associated with infrastructure at the Games. Learn more about this winning approach to preventing corruption.

Our contributors explore a wide variety of ways in which members of the public are fooled — sometimes without ever knowing it — and how police are pursuing their cases.

Insp Barry Baxter of the RCMP’s Commercial Crime Branch looks at identity fraud and how our personal and financial information has become a valuable commodity. RCMP Cst Lloyd Schoepp of Commercial Crime Section in Calgary talks about a joint initiative between local police and retailers aimed at raising awareness of payment card fraud known as skimming.

The Hon. David R. Dugas, U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Louisiana, talks about the Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force and the widespread fraud that took place while relief efforts for that disaster were in full swing. Dugas presents three basic principles in investigating disaster relief fraud that should be mandatory reading.

Meanwhile, Prof. Jeffrey Rosenthal from the University of Toronto discusses how the field of mathematics helped solve a high-profile investigation into an Ontario lottery fraud. He crunched the numbers in that case, and the figures were hard to refute.

Cross-border fraud abounds and police are seeing more and more victims taken in by criminals based in other countries. Read about an Australian man who travelled to Mali and was kidnapped for a ransom in that country. This article highlights the very real dangers lurking on the Internet, as well as how international collaboration can save lives.

Olaolu Adegbite of Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission talks about the work being done to tackle advance fee fraud schemes based in that country through increased enforcement, and how police can stay ahead of these scams by predicting how they will evolve.

Finally, David Jones of the U.K. Serious Fraud Office (SFO) describes the international co-operation required for many of its cases, including one in which a persistent Canadian victim triggered a major SFO investigation.

Outside our cover section, you can read a Q&A with the RCMP’s first criminal investigative psychologist, learn what coping strategies some RCMP child exploitation investigators use to help them in their work, find out how the New Zealand Police used the web to encourage the public to shape that country’s new policing act, and much more.

We hope you enjoy our first issue of 2008.

Katherine Aldred