Operation Moonlight

An Oxford Joint Woking initiative entitled “Operation Moonlight” is successfully tackling employment agency fraud across the country.  Steve Newman explains how:

Oxfordshire due to its proximity to the M1, M2, M40, M25 and M4 motorways is one of the countries favourite relocation areas for business both big and small.

The increase in employers has created a need for workers, both skilled and unskilled.  Thus in recent years Oxfordshire has seen an explosion of employment agencies being set up to service the expanding business needs of the country.

The “Moonlight” initiative is comprised of Oxfordshire C-FIX, which is part of the south East Region of the Department for Works and Pensions and the 5 local authorities within the county (Vale of White Horse, Oxford City Council, South Oxfordshire, Cherwell and West Oxfordshire, Cherwell and West Oxfordshire District Councils).  Over recent years, the number referrals received within the Oxfordshire group, relating to employment agencies, has increased.  Nationally, this is known to be a high-risk area for fraud due to the transient nature of the workers and the flexibility of the contracts.

In January 2002, it was decided that a sampling exercise would be carried out to attempt to determine the amount of fraud and error within this category.  The sampling exercise (Operation Weatherman) involved Cherwell District Council and C-FIS based at Banbury.  The sample consisting of 3 employment agencies produced a success rate of 25% with the vast majority being sanctionable.  A joint working bid for £157,000 was prepared, presented to both the Operational and Regional Boards and then accepted. 

We then appointed an Intelligence Officer, a Fraud Investigator, an Administration Officer and made up the project team (which we called Operation Moonlight) with a seconded CFIS investigator.

Project Moonlight started in July 2003 and has been extended until the end of September 2004.  Progress Moonlight started in July 2003 and has been extended until the end of September 2004.  Progress was, slow due to recruitment problems (we had to re advertise the investigators post) and also had to wait for people to complete their notice periods.  The sanctions started rolling in from December 2003 and to date the success rate is 32%.

Moonlight has had 3 successful prosecutions with more in the pipeline and 45 cautions and administration penalties (with more awaiting sanction interview on their 28-day cooling off period).  It has identified £183,244 in overpayments and even £5,000 in fraudulent single person discounts.

Joint working between CFIS and the Oxfordshire authorities, which was already good, is continuing to flourish, even in the post Howell environment.

Although Moonlight has highlighted good practices it also highlighted the problems that can arise with joint working and joint working bids.

These included time delays for obtaining overpayments thereby making prosecutions and sanctions time barred.  The logistics of trying to keep 6 stakeholders abreast of developments.  Almost everyone having different benefit systems and each stakeholder having its own prosecution policy.

We now know which type of agencies will produce the best results, the optimum size of data needed and referral types, which will result in sanctions, allowing us to prioritise workloads.

Project Moonlight has brought in about £100,000 more than its set up cost, with results still coming in.  This figure would have been greater if we could have electronically data matched/minded our data and thereby reduced the considerable resource cost of paper based data matching.

Article written by Stephen Newman, Fraud Manager at Cherwell District Council