This comment was made on the blog yesterday in the context of Companies House only employing six staff to check the filings of nearly four million UK companies:
If what is described here as the modus operandi and staffing levels, Companies House is by default, at least, aiding and abetting fraudulent activities many of which may well be criminal?
Alongside the destaffing of HMRC it's a wonder ‘we' have any tax income at all.
I think the point is an interesting one. And it is true. I think Companies House is aiding and abetting criminal activity by failing to ensure company law is adhered to by failing to provide the resources required to undertake proper company regualation.
But let me be clear, it'shardly alone in being an organisation that aids and abets crime and money laundering. To take another example, every time a telephone company provides services to someone making bulk calls that seek to exploit the vulnerable in a fraudulent fashion it too aids and abets crime by failing to put the systems in place to prevent this happening. And the reason why they fail? Profit, of course, derived from the crime.
It's the same with those delivering bulk mail that is fraudulent.
And the ISPs who deliver emails claiming to be from HMRC.
All these agencies claim to be bystanders whilst a crime goes on and that it is not their job to stop the abuse. I do not see why not. Prosecute just one director in a large company for aiding and abetting crime in this way and see what happens then. Alternatively, make them liable for the losses as banks are for insurance misselling. The acivities would stop overnight, just as a charge against the director of a public agency that failed to stop crime would overnight change the attitude of those who have willingly imposed cuts without considering they are responsible for the consequences.
Will it happen? I doubt it. The elite don't criminalise the elite because they think the elite couldn't possibly do something as tawdry as assist crime when pursuing profit or imposing public sector cuts. But to expose the fact that this is exactly what they do is now necessary. Use the laws that are available, in the case of the companies I note by simply alleging that they have profited by faciliating money laundering, and then see everything change. Just one prosecution would do.
I'll live in hope.
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‘I’ll live in hope’
Well, here’s to a long life then Richard!
Such monitoring of this ‘enabling’ of fraud would create a good many jobs – just like the electrification of our rail system would have done.
Are you implying that (e.g.) ISPs should monitor every email sent to ensure it is not abetting and that all post should be monitored?
They could start by looking at registered email addresses
Well, for a start, there is no central register of email addresses.
There are serious technical problems with filtering out fraudulent, or spam, emails. ISPs can do some filtering, but they won’t be able to block everything you’d like them to. And they don’t make higher profits by delivering more unwanted emails.
Providers of bulk email services to spammers/scammers could be prosecuted, except that they are usually outside the UK, and in jurisdictions where little can be done. (Often, it’s in jurisdictions where there are few opportunities for legitimate IT work.)
Email was not designed for an internet with many, very adaptable, hostile actors. Arguably, it can’t be fixed to work in the internet as it now is, and we should throw it away and use something else.
(These kinds of technical points only apply to email. Not to the others points in this blog.)
Of course there isn’t
But I am bemused by the issue: spam is identified
And you can guarantee some issues can be blocked, so why not bogus HMRC emails!
J A Rank
That’s what GCHQ does. Wouldn’t it be nice if they could work for us.
So GCHQ monitor all emails to ensure the sender is ‘registered’ and are who they say they are & when they find out the sender is false & abetting crime they do nothing?
If the ISP sending the email is in (say) Russia and can’t be instructed to remove the account then to stop this all ISPs in the UK and those serving UK residents would need a ‘blacklist’ to stop them being delivered?
Presumably they could at least deal with the HMRC issue – and the big list of scam addresses on the HMRC website wouldn’t be needed.
I just don’t see how this can be made to work.
I made my point: a prosecution would do the trick
Start with the easy ones: they'[re the telephone companies
The data below has just been released – £5.9bl of additional tax collected it seems
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/635330/Transfer_Pricing_and_Diverted_Profits_Tax_statistics.pdf
Add it all up and HMRC regularly claim they collect more than the tax gap
I make no further comment
“Alongside the destaffing of HMRC”…
They seem to be relying on member’s of the public or journalists to notify them of issues/mistakes, instead of employing someone to do it.
I suspect this has seeped into other areas for example the pensions annual allowance calculator has errors (https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/paac/). I have notified them of a couple (one has been fixed, the other they might have forgotten about), but they seem to want me to, charitably, provide worked example / test cases of their mistakes or probably just want me to go away…
Spot on.
Like the phone scams facilitated by the major phone companies. “Oh, the company is based in Bermuda – we can’t get your money back, there’s nothing we can do.” Well, not apart from ceasing to provide the facility and forwarding the money after taking their cut, no, nothing much at all!
Sorry to be boring but this is just wrong.
The UK phone companies have to provide a facility for incoming calls to each customer. The generation of outbound calls from Bermuda (to continue the example) is nothing to do with the UK telco and they merely deliver the call to your number. They have no knowledge of the call content, nor who is making the call other than the Bermuda telco. UK telcos don’t ‘take a cut’ – costs for inbound calls are covered by line rental.
The UK telco is not responsible for anybody handing money over to a fraudulent operation in Bermuda. This would be like holding Tesco responsible for selling a knife (legally) which is then used to murder someone.
In the UK there are rules governing mass marketing and companies do get prosecuted and fined etc if they break these rules which are monitored by the Information Commissioner. No such rules exist in some other countries which is why they are used. Nearly all international call traffic (and domestic) now is routed over the internet once the call gets to the telco system so the costs of international are minimal.
Sorry to go on1
Numbers can be blocked
There is no number for VOIP have a look if you get a skype call.
You can’t control outgoing e-mail because anybody can set up their own e-mail server, it takes just a few minutes and you can do it on any computer connected to the internet in any country, it doesn’t need to be done using a server. In fact you don’t even need to set up an e-mail server to transmit an e-mail, a child can do it using a telnet client if they are told approximately 3-4 commands to type in. The people sending spam and junk are almost certainly working this way, they won’t be using the servers of any company you can easily identify. This is exactly why Spam email has been almost impossible to stop.
Unless it is your suggestion that people should be prosecuted for allowing their servers to receive e-mail? That could be done, but it would be rather like prosecuting a home builder for allowing people to put dodgy letters through your letterbox.
Except most spam is easily identified
I don’t see the issue
The suppression will always be in transit
Only easily identified by a human being and it can be sent directly by anybody without using an ISP’s email server.
Excellent post Richard. There may be difficulties as claimed by some of your other commenters in dealing with ISPs who allow fraudulent emails to be sent, but the telephone companies certainly could be dealt with. I would suggest in the case of the telephone providers that if they enable bulk fraud to be committed in the way outlined in your piece it should be treated as though they have committed fraud through negligence. One director being sent down for fraud in these circumstances would be enough for others to learn proper scrutiny.
As to what proper scrutiny should be – I suggest that when someone seeks to acquire phone numbers in bulk they should be asked searching questions about their reasons for doing so, and unless they can provide bullet-proof justification backed up with proof that they are who they say are their request will be refused.
I have pressed this on to aspi.blog.
Which telephone provider’s director would you have imprisoned for a call initiated in (say) India or Vietnam and handled in the UK by the BT core network and then a subsequent provider (e.g. Talk Talk) which turned out to be a fraudulent offer of something? This could be a single call made by an individual to another individual, doesn’t have to be some elaborate operation, and the calling number may be invisible or faked.
The fraud is committed by the caller.
Bulk availability of phone numbers is available for directory enquiries etc. and software to turn anyone’s PC into an automated dialler is readily available and uses Excel and Skype
In the UK all this is controlled by the Information Commissioner ( https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-pecr/electronic-and-telephone-marketing/ ) In other places it isn’t.
Money laundering is done by the users of banks. But banks are liable for detecting and stopping it
Sorry – but you use an obviously false name and if you make crass comments you will end up being banned
Oh dear, the nit-pickers are out in force again. Instead of saying: “it will be difficult, there are problems, but we have the technology, we can find solutions, and we can change the law….” Strict Liability would be a start and few prison sentences for directors and they’d suddenly find solutions.
However, going back to a point about the elite not criminalising the elite, ever since a legal framework was established a few millennia ago it was created by the elite, for the elite and run by the elite. Just look at some of the people in the judiciary.
Strict liability: now there’s an idea to horrify those who love to excuse crime (as in tax abuse)
It isn’t nit-picking to point out the problems with controlling the email system.
When you consider that eliminating spam would be a billion dollar business you realise just how challenging the problem is.
I have been running spam filters of various kinds for years and I have received loads of spam that I would be glad to get rid of. The spam normally comes from home internet connections that have been hi-jacked. Ignoring the fact that there are billions of connected devices that aren’t in this country are you really going to give strict liability to thousands of UK residents who have an insecure computer at home because they haven’t updated their anti-virus software?
I use Gmail and find their spam filter to be remarkably effective. Occasional ones that slip through the net I add to the filter manually – they are often instantly identifiable because of deliberate daft spellings.
It is extremely rare that anything I do want goes to the spam file.
I have no idea how any of it works, but it’s good.
Exactly
Oh dear Richard. It sounds as if you have been hacked or duped by a phishing scam. I hope you did not lose too much money
What a bizarre and even crass comment that only a person who put themselves at the epicentre of all that mattered could make
Spot on, Richard.
Nail. Head. Smack.
Hello, Richard, I agree with you that people, especially government officials, MPs etc. who aid and turn a blind eye to criminality should be LIABLE to criminal charges. As you say one or two convictions would make people find a solution. There are always those who say nothing can be done and bring up all the arguments against bothering to do anything. These people are the most annoying. Where there is political will, all things can be achieved. It is clear the conservative government lacks the will to collect the tax. They should also be personally liable.
In the USA people have started “A Mass Action of Liability”. They have found a way of making government officials personally liable for not doing their job properly. I can send you details for you to look at. The strategy could possibly be used here.
Ron