CPA Bulletin

JCB FINANCE Fraudulent Hire The New Face of Plant Theft? Growing Problem This problem is growing and becoming more sophisticated. Such is the magnitude of the threat that a panel session on ‘Plant Theft and Fraud’ was incorporated into the recent CPA Conference in order to discuss, advise and raise awareness with members. Cyber Crime The rise in cyber-crime is truly astonishing as is the complexity and lengths that criminals will often go to in order to benefit from the crimes they are committing. Corporate Identity Theft There are too many possible areas of cyber- crime to go into in one article but one of the biggest risks, which is frighteningly easy for criminals to do, is for them to clone a company and effectively steal the identity of a business. With so much data in the public online arena, criminals are finding the details of legitimate businesses, the background of which satisfies the cover story they intend to use to commit crime. They are then cloning the company and using the details to open accounts and hire equipment, often in large quantities, that they intend to steal, usually to order. Organised Crime As we all know, construction plant and equipment is expensive and it is for this very reason that organised gangs are targeting the kit in this way. It is all well and good being able to steal the plant but you need to have a far reaching criminal network to be able to get it out of the country and disposed of. The criminals that have these connections are very organised and are often involved in many other crimes such as drug and people trafficking and money laundering. As a result, they are also usually well resourced whichmeans they are able to ‘invest’ money in their criminal activities in order to seem more plausible and therefore more difficult to detect. What to Look For? Many Plant Hirers have made strides in being more vigilant with the documentation that they are requesting before allowing kit to leave the yard but thieves are getting wise to this too. The usual advice is double check the documents including :- • Take ID and actually check that it is correct. Make sure you’ve got the original drivers’ licence or passport, not a photocopy that could have been tampered with. • Is the evidence of hired in plant insurance genuine? If you’re not sure, make a follow up check. Here at JCB Insurance Services we regularly check potential hirers’ insurance for our Plant Hire clients. • Does the address given match that on any ID given? • Does the name on any credit card used, match the name given? However, we also strongly recommend that you call the Head Office of the company the guy in front of you claims to work for. Check he has the authority to hire and also get a purchase order number if possible but do this using a land line number that you have found yourself. Don’t make the mistake of using a number he gives you because it could possibly be an accomplice on the other end of the phone. We fully accept that many hires are done by email and you don’t actually have a person stood in front of you. In these cases, make sure that you ask to speak to the person in question as well and confirm that he has made the hire rather than someone who has cloned the company details and is pretending to be him. Recent Examples Of the numerous examples we have dealt with this year, one particularly ‘good’ one stands out. Our Plant Hire client receives an enquiry. ‘We’ve secured a site in the area and it’s due to start in a week or so. Would you be able to meet us on site and give us some advice about the best kit for the job that you could supply?’ So our client agrees to meet the man on site as requested and when he gets there, the site is all fenced off with sign written hoardings up and there’s a site cabin and other people on site. The man even hands over a business card with his details on it. It is agreed what machines our client could supply as well as hire rates etc. and our client closely examines all of the paperwork given to ensure it is genuine and goes on to do a credit check. Taking our advice about calling the Head Office our client asks ‘does John Smith have authority to hire plant on your behalf?’ ‘Yes’ was the reply, ‘John’s one of our Contracts Managers’. Suffice to say that the hire turned out to be fraudulent and over £500,000 of kit was stolen in one hit. SoWhat Went Wrong? In this instance the site in question wasn’t a genuine site but the thieves had ‘invested’ in site hoarding, fencing and a site cabin and had it all sign written in order to appear genuine, build confidence and deceive the hirer. Despite being vigilant, our client’s hire desk had failed to spot the additional full stop in the email address. So instead of say abc- contractors.co.uk (the genuine email format for the cloned company) it read abc. -contractors.co.uk . ‘But they called the Head Office’ I hear you say. Yes they did, but they didn’t speak to the actual man himself. Coming back to information available on line, the thieves had found, probably on Linkedin or another networking site that John Smith was the Plant Manager for ABC Contractors and went as far as having business cards made up so they looked even more genuine. Vigilance and Communication Vigilance is the key. Make sure you focus on the detail. People are always under pressure to meet targets and get plant out of the yard or are just extremely busy in today’s fast paced world. Criminals know this and hope that you’ll miss a small detail that allows them in. But if in doubt, refuse. Surely it’s better to lose a hire than lose a machine? Also, share information in the industry. You all know each other in your area and whilst you are often competitors, don’t be afraid to pick up the phone to other hirers in your area to see if they have been contacted in a similar way The CPA are very good at sharing information with members – we all receive Maria Reid’s emails but we must do more to strength our own internal network within the Plant Hire community to make it harder for criminals to deceive you and steal your equipment. JCB Insurance Services Ltd is a Specialist Insurance Broker providing risk management advice and arranging all types of Insurance for the Construction and Plant Hire Industries. 0800 141 2877 www.jcbinsurance.com 24 CPA Bulletin > November 2019 www.cpa.uk.net