2018

Alaska Freeman of Radford lied about the accountancy qualifications she claimed to have.  She secured a role with Maun Industries Ltd in 2012 as assistant management accountant, and was soon promoted to general manager of a second company Maun purchased in 2013, Ketchum Manufacturing Company Ltd.

However, she used her position to make personal purchases on company credit cards, transfer funds into her own bank accounts, and steal petty cash – in total taking around £101,000. Freeman was finally exposed in 2015 when HMRC told the company's MD Eddie Thomas they owed more than £100,000 in unpaid NI and PAYE contributions.

However, Freeman’s fraud did not stop there. After she was bailed in February 2016 and was still being investigated, she successfully applied for a job as Financial Controller at Nexor Limited in Nottingham. Once again, she was able to use company credit cards to pay for items such as jewellery, clothing, computer equipment and beauty products, this time totalling more than £3,200.

It was revealed that she had lied on her CV, hiding the details of her arrest.

We are delighted to announce that Verifile Ltd has been accredited with an Investors in People (IIP) ‘Silver award'. This is the highest level that is achievable in the first year of accreditation.

Since 1991 the IIP has been setting standards that improve people management. As the UK’s leading accreditation for business improvement, IIP provides a wealth of resources for businesses to innovate, develop and grow, with a focus on good people making a great business.

To achieve this award, we had to take part in a detailed, audited process.  This involved our team completing the IIP online survey, taking part in interviews and focus groups, along with meeting observations.  IIP was then able to measure our performance against the IIP’s framework which is based around nine key indicators of high performance.

Successful IIP accreditation means we are a great employer and we have a clear commitment to sustainability. We will be working hard to implement the development recommendations, to further enhance the performance of our organisation. We will also use the IIP to facilitate the ongoing development of our people management practices.

Bupa Insurance Services Limited (Bupa) has been fined £175,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for failing to have effective security measures in place to protect customers’ personal information.

Between 6 January and 11 March 2017, a Bupa employee was able to extract the personal information of 547,000 Bupa Global customers and offer it for sale on the dark web.  The employee accessed the information via Bupa’s customer relationship management system, known as SWAN. The system holds customer records relating to 1.5 million people.

The employee sent bulk data reports to his personal email account. The compromised information, which included names, dates of birth, email addresses and nationality, was later offered for sale on the dark web.