National Audit Office – United Kingdom
Overview: This guide concentrates on external fraud which is where third parties, such as businesses, individuals or organised crime groups, steal money from a department or agency, either by obtaining payments to which they are not entitled or keeping monies they should pay over to the department. Frauds may be opportunistic attempts by individual customers or businesses to obtain a financial advantage. The sums involved in any one such case may be small, but these can mount up to significant losses of public money if there are a lot of cases involved. At the other end of the scale, departments or agencies may suffer from more systematic and premeditated attacks by organised crime groups. These may be fewer in number but the losses in each case are substantial. In some cases fraudsters may work in collusion with the department’s staff.
As well as diverting money that should be spent on public services fraud can undermine the position of honest citizens and businesses and support the activities of those involved in other serious crime.
