When you consider purchasing a house with the help of a mortgage, you must first find out how much home loan amount you can afford to repay on time. How much of an expensive house you can purchase depends on the amount you can get. So, before searching for your dream house, ask yourself -“how much house can I afford?”. After you find a house you can afford, shop around to find a mortgage at a favorable interest rate. While shopping around, don’t forget to check the service background of the lenders. There are various fraudulent lenders who scam borrowers in different ways. So, it is necessary to find a reliable lender.

How can fraudulent lenders scam you? Fraudulent mortgage lenders can scam you in various ways. The most common scams are: • Inflated appraisal: Lenders get your home appraised to determine the size of the mortgage they will offer you. Fraudulent lenders inflate the appraised value and offer you a larger loan amount. Larger mortgage will require you to make high monthly payments and this is how these lenders defraud you to make high profit. • Not disclose fees upfront: To obtain a home loan, you have to pay a number of fees, starting from origination fee to underwriting fee. Scammers do not disclose all these types of costs upfront and later charge you with hefty fees. How can you prevent getting scammed? Some of the tips to help you prevent yourself from falling into traps of fraudulent lenders are: • Verify the value of property: Gather information about the prices of similar kind of houses in the neighborhood. You can also consider taking help of an independent appraiser to verify the value of your property. • Ask for good faith estimate: Ask you lender to provide you with the good faith estimate of all the costs that you have to bear in order to obtain the home loan. • Read documents before signing: You must read and understand each and every document before signing them. You should also ask your lender to provide you with copies of all documents that you sign. Apart from lenders, you can also be defrauded by mortgage brokers. So, when you’re considering obtaining service of a broker, check its reputation. You can ask your friends and relatives for referrals. In this way, you can easily find a reliable mortgage professional and obtain a home loan that will suit your needs and affordability the best.

I have always liked the various regional fraud forums (or should it be fora?). They provide a great networking event for me as a forensic accountant specialising in fraud to attend. Since meeting with Northumbria Police ‘s Phil Butler prior to the inaugural North East Fraud Forum event – must be as far back as 2003 – I have been attending these events – including the North West Fraud Forum and the London Fraud Forum. I spoke at the very first one and have given talks at them subsequently. There are other fora around the country, but you can only attend so many networking events!

In my own area, Yorkshire and Humber, I had been attempting to get a local fraud forum galvanised for some time. I remember working with a leading fraud lawyer from DLA Piper to interest some of our public sector colleagues to spark off a similar regional forum. This was back in 2004/2005. My lawyer friend was tasked with getting the Leeds City Council interested and I was to do the same with the local West Yorkshire Police force. Unfortunately neither of us had much success – perhaps we were not very good at lobbying or working the “politics” of the matter. My own response from the then acting DI of the WY Fraud Office was negative – and that I should seek to attend the North East Fraud Forum for any networking I wanted to do!

Thankfully that officer has moved on now and there is indeed a Yorkshire and Humberside regional Fraud Forum in operation – set up by the sterling efforts of others I must say, though I continue to be a strong supporter. It does get a lot of support from the police forces, not just West Yorkshire but North Yorkshire, Humberside and South Yorkshire forces as well as various other leading organisations and bodies.

In fact Paul Welton of Humberside Police Economic Crime Unit called me last week and asked if I would like to speak to BBC Humberside about why I attended the forum and I said that I would be delighted to help. I was to chat to Andy Comfort on his breakfast programme on Monday morning of the 7th of June – the same day as one of the forums events “Tackling Business Fraud” (that I was attending later that day).

So this morning – eight o’clock approaches and I am sitting nervously waiting for my phone call – a list of prepared responses as to why I attended Yorkshire and Humberside Fraud Forum’s events.  Of course once the call comes all preparation goes out of the window – we chat about fraud live on radio for well over 10 minutes and how it is an increasing problem today. It certainly focuses the mind – what are the problems that fraud poses for us today and how do we tackle it? The fraud forums are only a small part of the answer, but they do go a little way to illustrate the importance of the public and private sectors working together – something that all seem to voice but few ever look practically to see how it can work.

The police will tell you that they are under-resourced when it comes to dealing with cases of fraud – it is not surprising as fraud investigations are extremely labour intensive. I understand that there are only something like 400 – 500 full time police officers working in the various fraud squads around the uk. Compare that to a typical fraud, maybe worth around £250,000 in losses to the victim – might take up the full time of at least one if not more police officers – for 6 months, a year or even longer. Then consider that the level of fraud is estimated to cost the UK some £30.2 billion per year (as estimated by the National Fraud Authority and probably a vast underestimate) and you will see why the police alone can only chip at the surface of the fraud problem.

Other agencies investigate fraud of course – we have the Serious Fraud Office – that the new government is considering combining with the Financial Services Authority and Office of Fair Trading’s fraud investigation wings – to form a more powerful Economic Crime Agency.  We have  investigators from the Department For Business Innovation and Skills and from HMRC as well as from other agencies – all investigating fraud.

But what we really do need – and this is exactly in tune with David Cameron’s fight against public sector waste of recent years – is a much closer involvement of the private sector in the fight against fraud generally. I would like to see this achieved by the utilisation of private sector investigation resources and financial fraud specialists – using transparent tendering methods based on obtaining the best quality of services at the most reasonable prices.

It is difficult to believe that we are already into month 6 of 2010. It only seems like yesterday that I returned from my holiday in New York to the minus 15 degree centigrade weather at Manchester Airport at the beginning of January! Now five months later and we have a new Conservative government (Liberally tempered of course) in power and the promise of some sense being brought to the UK. Sense that is after some massive cuts in all the areas of public spending that generally pay my bills! Time for some radical thinking or what?

Actually I do not see the pressure on public spending as a problem. As somebody who has always operated on a “value based” approach instead of the professionals’ normal “hourly based fee” I find that I still remain competitive in all areas of publicly funded fraud activities. This includes working for the fraud regulators and undertaking expert witness work funded by the Legal Services Commission.

However, it is no good being simply “competitive” these days. Promise of results should be most important. In the field of dealing with fraud matters this can be very difficult and yet I believe that one of the fraud investigators’ biggest developing markets is the smaller company or individual who has lost money to the crooks. This is the sector that seems to have the hardest time sorting out the problems caused by the fraudster. Identity theft causes disproportionate distress to the victims compared to the financial; lo0ss they suffer. They also lose credit ratings and the ability to operate in today’s digital environment. Gone are the days that we were paid in cash and bought everything we needed using the same. The loss of a few hundred pounds by a family can cause huge hardship, and thousands of such victims together will provide millions of income for the organised fraudsters.

It is important that smaller losses are investigated. There should be little attention paid to proportionality where crime is involved, but when it comes to trying to get £10,000 back from an employee theft this does not seem to be the case. The only way I have been able to help victims in such smaller cases is to write a letter for them after a brief look at the case details and one or two documents – for them to take to the police. such a letter can cause the authorities to sit up and take note – it is sort of a mini- fraud investigation report that serves to illustrate the seriousness of the loss and show that further investigation will bear fruit. By spending a little on such a letter can stimulate interest and even provide a focus for other victims to band together and fund a worthwhile asset recover action. First Stage Investigation Services are intended to be a cost effective solution to the situation where the level of loss does not merit huge sums being invested in recovery action but can serve either as a catalyst for more substantial regulatory action (and compensation) or can even promote a negotiated settlement in some cases.

One of the most common questions asked of employment lawyers is how to safely sack an employee or director who is suspected of being on the take.  It is a question that often cascades down to forensic accountants who are asked to provide financial evidence for the frauds or assist with tracing and recovering the money.  Often, such fraud specialists will be asked to assist with the disciplinary process and also with providing a pivot for the subsequent civil or criminal action.

One thing that generally becomes obvious when asked to help out is that an organisation seems to be very indignant that a trusted member of the business could turn out to be a thief.  However, nearly always the problem has been created by the business itself, usually because no heed has been taken whatsoever to the risk of fraud.

There is a commonly recounted saying that only 10% of the population are criminally minded, but that only a similar amount of 10% are truly law abiding.  The rest of the population 80% are usually good unless motive and opportunity are put in their way.

Motive and opportunity – the most significant drivers of fraud – far more important than having a criminal mindset in the first place.  To see how this works – take a pretty common situation where a financial director uses his director’s current account (correctly) to record any personal spending.  At the end of the financial year he raises a bonus large enough after tax to clear the current account.

This is a pretty common occurrence and many business owners do the same. But what if the finance director is the person who is trusted with all the accounting function and the other directors, often not so financially astute, leave the money side to him?  If the bonus is not authorised then this is effectively theft.

The finance director may argue that he has posted similar bonuses to the other directors’ accounts – and shows them their accounts in credit. But this is a paper accounting figure and the business may not be able to afford to pay the sums owing to the other directors – yet the finance directo has had the benefit of the expenditure throughout the year.

If the company policy does not have controls to prevent the above, it is possible that the finance director will escape sanction and it will be hard to dismiss him.  It is important where one person is given overall control of a finacial function that there are some controls in place to make the person answerable. For instance, there will be limits to spending (cheque writing, credit card payments, bank mandates etc) without second or even third director approval. There will be a regular publication of directors’ current accounts and any payments or bonuses over and above contractually agreed amount must have general (and minuted) board approval.

In my work as a forensic accountant I see too many instances where a couple of business owners or directors suddenly realise that a fellow director has overstepped the trust they have been given. They want his blood but in fact in many cases they have simply given him too much opportunity and when motive arises – and being short of money can arise very easily for all manner of reasons – it is only human nature for the vast majority of people to succumb to the temptation!

Identity theft is a subject that is raised and discussed at many fraud forums and similarly reported in an increasing number of news articles. It is not just the cloning of identities followed by fraudulently obtaining goods or services on credit cards that results from identity thefts. Some very complex frauds are built on false identities and credibility stolen from others.

A report in this week’s Financial Mail in the Mail on Sunday illustrates how such fraud might be working. It involves a potential boiler room fraud which involves the selling of bogus or worthless shares in business ventures by high pressure salesmen. Credibility to their product is provided by details of another real and likely more successful venture whose details can be checked in the public domain.

In this case it appears that an oil company is touting for investment in its two “proven” oilfields. Its web site gives details of a director that are the same as those of another company Petroneft Resources who also has oil fields in Lineyoye and Tungolskye, names that are curiously similar to those quoted for the other bogus oil company. The bogus oil company cannot be contacted and its address details given are false. Petroneft, which is based in Ireland and is clearly a bone fide company, was astounded to find that there is another company that appears to be advertising the same assets as it owns.

Petroneft has reported this instance of credibility hijacking to the Irish Financial Regulator, Financial Services Authority and City of London Police. The FSA say that incidents of identity theft and associated unauthorised sale of investments in typical “boiler room frauds” has increased dramatically over recent months. In the last three months alone it has received 29 such reports.

It does seem that even with the current economic climate that there is plenty of money that investors are seeking to find homes for. This may be a case of moving funds around in an increasingly competitive market or there being more money available for investment. Whatever the case, people with money and those responsible for others’ are still investing in bogus schemes at an alarming rates. Ponzi frauds and other advance fee scams are still being reported and the current flavour it seems is the boiler room threat.

Financially astute persons (i.e. those with money or investing it for others) should not be easily caught by these scams. There is a level of fraud prevention due diliegence that can be carried out that does not involve much effort but will uncover, or at least throw up some red flags, most of the bogus investment opportunities. It is no good relying on company searches in a climate where identities are so easily hijacked. Drilling down into an individual’s or organisation’s identity is essential, to uncover all of the public information available and checking or cross referencing this wherever possible. When investing several £100,000 or millions, surely it is worth checking to see if a director is who he says he is and lives at his stated registered address? For a few pounds this, and many other details, can be so easily verified.

Mark Jenner is a forensic accountant specialising in fraud investigation and fraud prevention.

For some time there has been a general feeling held by public and private sector fraud practitioners that the issue of fraud in the UK was not treated as seriously as it should. Campaigns by bodies such as the Association of Chief Police Officers (“ACPO”), the highly successful regional fraud fora and many others, have gradually raised both the public and the Government’s  awareness of the serious threat that fraud is to individuals, organisations and the economy as a whole. As a result the Government commissioned a 2006 Fraud Review following which in 2008 the Attorney General’s office ring fenced a budget of £29 million to establish a National Strategic Fraud Authority (“NSFA”). Somewhere along the line the new body changed its name to the National Fraud Authority (“NFA”) with a dedicated website at: http://www.attorneygeneral.gov.uk/nfa

There has been little news in the ensuing period concerning the NFA’s activities. Appointments of interim and permanent chief executives were well advertised as with all political posts. One of the first outputs seems to be a survey of the level of fraud in the UK that was published in January 2010. It was this survey that announced that fraud cost the UK some £30.2 billion per year that reminded me of the NFA’s existence and made me wonder what they were currently doing to help deal with the problem of fraud.

It does seem that one of the Authority’s tasks is to roll out details of the progress that they are making together with the general anti-fraud message at various relevant gatherings around the UK. These include speaking slots at the different Fraud Fora events that are held around the country. Therefore it was with much interest that the North West Fraud Forum’s annual conference was attended on 11 February 2010 at the DeVere Whites Hotel in Bolton.

Two out of three talks during the morning session were related to the NFA. However, the very first talk was on a different subject – an interesting piece by Lancashire MP Rosie Cooper, who related a personal experience of identity theft fraud. The talk highlighted the weak and ineffective response the authorities  have historically made to reports of such fraud and Rosie and the audience (which included over 100 respected public and private sector fraud practitioners from around the UK) eagerly awaited the NFA’s report as to how their new thrust would help frustrated victims of fraud like Rosie.

Unfortunately the NFA’s chief executive Dr Bernard Herdan could not make the conference and a last minute substitute of his colleague Cordia Lewis was made. Cordia was an Australian librarian with an MBA. She began her talk be reiterating private sector fraud statistics that had been compiled by the leading accountancy firm KPMG.

Her speech included details of the NFA’s intention to compile a regular Annual Fraud Indicator and an update of the newly established fraud reporting functions of “Action Fraud” for individuals and SMEs or the “National Fraud Intelligence Bureau” for larger organisations and fraud regulators.

Her message was - that if Rosie had experienced identity fraud now she would be able to report the matter to Action Fraud. However, this caused a storm of response from the audience with questions along the line of “do we stop reporting fraud to the police?” and “is this not another level of beaurocracy being inserted into the system?”

The next speaker had a recent example of how the reporting process worked.  Detective Superintendent Steve Clarke of the City of London Police headed up one of this squad’s six fraud groups and which was also the lead force in the coordinating the efforts of the NFA. He also headed up the NFA’s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau – the reporting point for major frauds. Steve related the case of Focus Clothing which the City of London is now investigating. This case which has been in the news resulted from over 50 calls to the NFA’s fraud helpline from individuals who had not received goods they had bought online from Focus.

It does seem that there is a lot of talk and good intentions from the NFA but certainly the audience at the North West Fraud Forum were not convinced that reporting a fraud to them would result in any more action than if the fraud was reported to the police or other front line fraud regulator. I discussed the matter with a solicitor, a government company inspector and a private sector fraud investigator all on my table at the conference. Together with my own views as a forensic accountant specialising in fraud matters, the consensus was that the £29 million would be better spent on funding more dedicated fraud squad officers in the various regional police forces!  Only time will tell.

By: Mark Jenner – Forensic Accountant

According to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) some 20% of all crime takes place on business premises. When you think of all the theft, murder, drugs and the like, this is an awful lot of crime!

The reason of course is that businesses are the target for all forms of fraud – employee fraud, creditor fraud, supplier fraud, Internet fraud…the list can go on. You should not wait until your business becomes a victim as it inevitably will at some point, do something about it now.

Apart from the obvious security issues for your assets, you need to put together a fraud reduction strategy that will help protect your business from various types of fraud, phishing, pharming, identity theft plus hacking and virus threats to your IT systems.

Your data needs protecting also. Even apparently simple information such as your customer lists are valuable and you do not want your employees giving it to your competitors. The data can also be lost through burglary and criminal damage to your premises. Think of the effort that would be required trying to recreate this information.

Remember to vet your employees when recruiting. You want trustworthy workers who will not put your business and assets at risk. Resumes very often contain falsehoods, and at best exaggerations. Make sure you take up references, check periods of employment and question what an applicant was doing in a “gap” period. Perhaps they were doing time at Her Majesty’s pleasure for fraud! Yes fraudulent employees do commit the same crimes time and time again, moving from one complacent employer to another.

Complacency is the name of the game when it comes to fraud risk. Although it does not always pay to be overly oppressive in your anti-fraud policy and cause resentment and even fear amongst your staff, a tightly controlled work place will undoubtedly prevent the fraudster striking or at least make him think twice before having a go.

Mark Jenner is a forensic accountant and fraud expert advising companies on cost effective ways of preventing fraud.

For there to be a meaningful fight against fraud there needs to be a legal system capable of dealing with the cases brought by the prosecution authorities. There is no point beefing up the police fraud squads and giving them resources (which should include adequate funding for forensic accountants) to investigate fraudulent activity if the cases are going to falter at court.

Why would they do that? If a criminal trial is not managed properly and proportionately it will either fail completely leading to a re-trial or an appeal. This happens a lot and is the biggest reason why costs of dealing with criminals in general are so high.

The Legal Services Commission comes under fire a lot – not just from this blog site! The Daily Mail yesterday (2nd February 2009) reported the gross waste of public funds by the LSC. Audits have revealed that they have paid some £25 million too much to criminal defence lawyers over the year. If a public auditor is able to uncover £25 million wasted out of a budget of £2 billion per anum then just think how much a proper fraud investigator would find!

This may sound a bit of a sweeping statement, and is based purely on anecdotal evidence. But do not forget that as a forensic accountant I not only get paid for a lot of my work by the Legal Services Commission but also deal very closely with firms of solicitors and barristers that do also. Yes I do see some barristers getting paid £1 million each year from public funds, but I also struggle myself to receive ordinary market rates for my own work.

Sometimes I must argue my case with an LSC case worker that is questioning a quotation that I have submitted. Having done these sorts of jobs for over 15 years I usually have a good idea of how long they will take and what resources I will need to apply. It is not always easy to translate these ideas into a recipe for my costs and sometimes have to argue whether or not each of 10,000 documents will require 20 or 25 seconds to review! I know that I will need a week and a half or so but putting it into simple science is not always so easy.

Apparently since the 1980s spending by the LSC has multiplied 7 fold. Its not surprising – forget the published inflation figures – in 1983 we bought a house for a price that we would easily have to pay 12 times more for now. That aside, the past decade or so has seen the labour government increase the amount of legislation in place many times. The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 is only one example of many new laws that were introduced, were lengthy and ill conceived. They have led to substantially more work needed to be done by the Defence solicitors and barristers to prevent miscarriage of justice. I have assisted in some of this and know how much time can be wasted by the Crown.

I would rather be putting the fraudsters away any day, but am happy to present a truly interdependent stance within my Fraud Advisory Services work portfolio and act as expert accounting witness for the defense in white collar crime cases. Because the Crown tends not to prepare financial cases in a safe fashion, often by not utilizing forensic accountants, there is much scope for checking and representing the case by the defense. My work in this area is not intended to get the dguilty off, but ensure that their case is presented at an accurate level of severity so that the courts can award a just sentence. If the LSC continue to be criticized for waste and their budgets cut accordingly, who will be doing the essential fraud defence work to balance the system?

In October 2008 the Attorney General’s Office in the UK established the National Fraud Strategic Authority (NFSA) as a result of its Fraud Review in 2006. Being true to form for government agencies it has already had its first change of name to the National Fraud Authority (NFA)!

The NFA web site does not appear to work and very little information appears to be forthcoming from a Google search. It appears that the National Fraud Reporting Council (NFRC), whose NFRC web site also appears to be inoperative, is still embryonic in its development.

In 2008 the UK government allocated £29 million to put into place the various recommendations resulting in the decision to establish the NFA and NFRC. The City of London Police is to take the lead role in investigating serious and complex fraud and are tasked with helping other police forces with their investigations. They are working with the government to establish the NFRC.

Nothing much seems to be happening at present. News broke in 2009 about the appointment of Bernard Herdan as the full time chief executive of the NFSA (or NFA) to spearhead the coordination of inter organisation efforts against the growing problem of fraud. Herdan’s provenance is as an interim chief executive at the Securities Industry Authority since 2006, prior to that having spent some seven years as an executive director at the Identity and Passport Service. The distinct lack of a broad serious fraud experience does rather smack of this being a political appointment of a crony by Baroness Scotland (the Attorney General).

Although nothing much seemsto be occuring, there are one or two reports attributed to the NFA – National Fraud Authority.

For example in its first Annual Fraud Indicator report the NFA estimates that fraud costs the UK £30 billion per year – almost twice the previous estimates of some £17 billion. They say that the highest sectors of fraud loss are:

• Tax fraud at £15.2 billion
• Consumer scams at £3.5 billion
• Insurance fraud at £2 billion
• Mortgage fraud £1 billion

These figures should be viewed with some suspicion. There have been a number of estimates of the level of fraud in the UK over the past few years, many endorsed by the government. These are usually between around £40 billion and £100 billion. In addition, every fraud survey usually caveats their results saying that they are likely to be on the low side because of the hidden nature of fraud and the fact that much is not reported. The estimates do not include money laundering or hiding the proceeds of other crimes such as drugs, trafficing and extortion.

If the truth be known, the level of fraud as a proportion of the economy is huge but will never be accurately estimated.

Take the mortgage fraud figure of £1 billion for example. I was involved in a mortgage fraud case worth around £100 million. During the course of my investigations I began to understand how great the problem was. There were 100s of other property developers and others undertaking the very same tyoe of business that I was looking at. In fact it seemed to be the case that the way the UK plc was being run was fraudulent! Much of the toxic debt in the UK today results from overvalued properties and freely given loans without due diligence. In the past one to five years the annual level of mortgage fraud was well in excess of £1 billion.

Tax fraud is another example which must be viewed carefully. The level of tax evasion is not widely understood, especially by HMRC. I recall other cases over the past six or so years ago where I investigated a number of different support publishers. These companies pretend to represent good causes and charities and sell expensive advertising space in diaries, wall planners and directories. Many of the companies were closed down by the authorities as a result of the investigations, but likely sprang up immediately afterwards under a different name (phoenix companies).

The common factor between these companies was that they all employed teams of tele sales operatives to sell their advertising space. Every person was employed on a self employed basis and responsible for their own tax. Most never declared any of their commission earnings and many were also on supplementary benefit. I attempted to present my revelations to HMRC. Many of their junior managers were interested and tried to arrange a meeting for me with a senior policy maker – but none were interested. I was told that the UK would have to wait for new legislation. This meant that anybody interested in preventing such whole scale tax loss (as this practice ran much further than just the small sector I was investigating) would need to start lobbying members of parliament! It seemed that HMRC was only interested in applying its duties by the book – not looking to plug an obvious gap.

Much of the tax fraud in the quoted figures comes from Value Added Tax evasion – though if we think that HMRC have solved the carousel fraud problem (missing trader inter community fraud – MTIC fraud) by introducing reverse VAT charges on mobile phones, computer chips and now carbon credits, we are sadly mistaken. A recent investigation that I was involved in revealed that the spiders web of businesses involved in VAT fraud across the UK is huge, and the commodities exploited range through everything that can be traded – I have seen clothing, textiles, furniture, household goods, electronics, books, dvds, food supplements, spectacles, drugs……………..

I do hope that the figures presented by the NFA have not used too much of my tax money! There is a feeling that £29 million of funding would be better spent developing individual economic crime units and fraud squads around the uk. Fraud prevention and fraud detection at the coal face is money better spent than the development of even larger public sector agencies and quangos!  A couple of new well trained financial investigators in each regional police force together with all the supplementary resources and technology required including access to proper experienced forensic accountants – would be money better spent.

2010 opens with thick snow and ice. I was lucky as my trip to New York in the first week of the New Year went without hitch. Our flights and connections seemed to match the few windows in the weather and no delays were experienced. There was one small worry when blizzards started raging in York on New Year’s day – we were due to head over the Pennines at three o’clock the next morning and had visions of the M62 being impassable. Therefore late afternoon saw us rushing to pack and set off while the snow kept falling. We stayed the night in Manchester and had a comfortable flight!

Back to my desk after the break sees a number of cases to continue with in my fraud investigation portfolio and a couple of new inquiries via the Internet, one being from a police force economic crime unit and the other from a new firm of lawyers.

It seems that this year is heading off for a basket of criminal frauds and fraudulent trading – not much changes there then! It will be interesting to see if there are any pronouncements from the Legal Services Commission about their proposed cut backs in funding experts or will we all just experience a harder job getting our quotes agreed?  Without any cohesion amongst us forensic accountanst I can forsee many simply dropping their rates just to make sure they get the work. I am sure that the LSC will use market forces and the lack of perfect information to ensure that they get away with underfunding criminal cases.

A new investigation is kicking off into yet more bad business management and phoenixing of businesses. I guess that people like to make the money but hate to pay any of it back to the suppliers or tax man!