25 April 2017 
Matt Sisson, Projects and Membership Manager
Hopefully all institutions will have now run checks to ensure that their systems for approving staff and student bank details are robust. The flood of scam emails around payroll self-service and subsequent laundering through student mules certainly scared a few people. Thank you to those as well who have emailed us about the Spam emails apparently from BUFDG about invoices. Unlike the payroll-self-service fraud, they are at the less-convincing end of the Spam scale, and you all rightly guessed that these are fraudulent, but please do remain alert as phishing emails appear to be on the rise.
The University of Sheffield has taken the scam threat very seriously, and has invested time (and no doubt money!) to produce a fantastic awareness-raising video for staff and students, titled ‘Scamspotting’. It’s a humorous but also effective way of getting the audience’s attention, and will get the message across more effectively than a bulk email. It’s only 90-seconds long, so please watch it – it might give you some ideas. Roping in your student drama and film students (or drama society if you don’t have an actual course), and giving them this important job to do, is a great way of solving a university problem and boosting student CVs at the same time. Win-Win!
In related news, there are just a couple two weeks left to book on to the two ‘Fraud first-responder’ training courses in London on the 22nd May and in Edinburgh on Friday 2nd June. Back by popular demand, these are high-quality, HE-specific courses, and the two editions we’ve held so far, in London and Leeds, were very well regarded, with fantastic feedback. Please do consider attending, or alerting a relevant colleague to the event. The event provides delegates with both a comprehensive understanding of the range and risks of fraud in HE, as well as a chance to assess and develop their own institution’s Fraud Response plans against actual HE case-studies. If you in any way feel that your HEI’s counter-fraud preparedness and response could be improved (if you don’t know, then it probably does!) then this is tailor made to help you.
