Joint Fraud Taskforce board minutes: 8 July 2020
Published 23 July 2021
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Attendees
- Mike Haley (Chair) (Cifas)
- Nick Downing (Cifas)
- Neil Masters (Cifas / JFT Secretariat)
- Karen Baxter (CoLP)
- Benjamin Russell (NECC)
- Louise Baxter-Scott (National Trading Standards)
- Alasdair MacFarlane (RBS)
- John Formby (UK Finance)
- Stuart Skinner (Nationwide /UK Finance Fraud Comm.)
- Graham Wynn (BRC)
- Christopher G (NCSC)
- Katherine McNulty (Home Office)
- Albina Paloi (Home Office / JFT Secretariat)
Apologies
- Adrian Gorham (Telefonica)
Item 1 - Introductions
Mike Haley, Chair of JFT, welcomed board members to this first remote meeting of the JFT Management board.
Mike noted that the focus of this meeting is to provide an update on the status of work across the workstreams, and to discuss the fraud ecosystem’s response to Covid.
Mike welcomed Stuart Skinner from Nationwide, who will be taking over the banking side of the UK Finance Fraud Committee, and Graham Wynn from BRC who takes over from James Martin.
Item 2 - Agree minutes and actions of 26 February 2019 meeting together with matters arising
No issues raised with minutes from the meeting on 26 February 2020.
Item 3 - Workstream updates
Configurable Bank Account
The concept has passed through two UK Finance banking sector groups and has broad support for an industry led specification.
The next stage is to present the concept to the Payment Services Board (PSB) which comprises the CEOs of the major banks.
Funds Repatriation
The JFT Legal and Regulatory workstream has been focusing on developing a project to enable us to repatriate more money back to victims, by taking it from the criminal that stole it.
This issue presents some difficult legal and technical challenges that have hampered progress on this issue to date. An expert working group was assembled to develop some options. The group brings together legal and policy colleagues from UK Finance, Government and various banks.
There are a few interesting ideas for how we could repatriate funds to victims (e.g. by trapping the money in first generation mule account, we have a better chance of repatriating it.) These ideas need to be explored and developed in more detail, assessing the regulatory difficulties and whether legislation is required.
Home Office colleagues have reached out to contacts in the legal sector to request assistance in progressing the legal assessment of options.
Closing down Vulnerabilities
The JFT Telecommunications and Banking Group are working to deliver on the Economic Crime Plan Action to close down vulnerabilities that criminals exploit.
The group have raised several areas of interest for activity, including:
- burner phones
- fraudsters holding the line open
- ‘Smishing’
- use of UK numbers overseas
- spoofed calls
- Number Porting
The Home Office is looking to progress work with key sectors in the coming months. This sector work will be the vehicle used to deliver on actions in this space, selecting 1-3 key areas of interest which we can collectively impact.
Collective Response
The Collective Response (CR) commenced in 2016 to deliver ‘an improved tactical response to fraud (and any associated criminality where fraud is the predicate offence) by taking joint public/private action to prosecute and/or otherwise disrupt prolific fraudsters affecting the retail banking sector’.
A fortnightly meeting and an information sharing platform allows banks to share threats between themselves and with law enforcement, and initiate tactical action.
This has resulted in arrests and assets seized, and the sharing of current criminal methodologies ensures banks are better informed to spot and then prevent a fraud.
Item 4 - COVID-19 update
Benjamin Russell (NECC) provided an update on Project Etherin.
The cross-sector and cross-organisation cooperation on covid-19 has been really positive.
The main lesson learnt is the need for consistent messaging across organisation to ensure that the public are informed and not confused.
Sharing of information in a timely manner also remains a key area for development.
Item 5 - governance and future of JFT
Katherine McNulty (Home Office) flagged that we are in the process of arranging a bilateral meeting between Mike and James Brokenshire, the Minister for Security, to discuss next steps on the JFT.
All members agreed that JFT membership needs to be widened to include other sectors at present the membership is focused more on the financial and telcos sector. There is need to diversify the participants to ensure that we have a broad understanding of how criminals are utilising cross-sector vulnerabilities to commit fraud.
All agreed that simplicity if key, we need one single Protect Plan with specific short and long-term deliverables.
Mike Haley noted that we will need to communicate any changes to the stakeholder group, and assess how we can make best use of the stakeholder group for any future work.
Mike Haley noted that the next JFT management board meeting focus on 2 aspects: providing greater clarity on the future of the JFT; and continuing the discussion on how we embed this spirit of collaboration, as demonstrated during the initial covid-19 response phase, going forward.
The date of the next management board meeting will be determined following discussions with the Security Minister.
Item 6 - AOB
N/A
Date of Next Meeting
TBC