A Guide to PROFIT

PROFiT is the short name for Prevention of Fraud in Trade. The original PROFiT members came together in 2000 to tackle fraud in the travel industry and to educate the trade and public to avoid economic crime. Prevention of Fraud in Trade is a not-for-profit organisation that provides counter-fraud advice for organisations and industry trade bodies such as ABTA.

For many years PROFiT worked behind the scenes. However, we realised that to be more effective our work needed to be more accessible and so we held our official launch at New Scotland Yard in 2009.

Amongst the speakers at the launch were, Commander, Nigel Mawer (Met Police); (Detective Chief Inspector, David Clark (City of London Police); Andy Auld (Serious & Organised Crime Agency); The Chair of the Parliamentary All Party Identity Fraud Group, Nigel Evans MP (Con. Ribble Valley); Dave Pope (192.com), Mike Monk (ABTA Head of Finance); and convicted fraudster Elliott Castro author of ‘Other People’s Money’.

During 2009 PROFiT undertook a nine month trade awareness campaign through our press partners Travel Weekly. This campaign entitled, ‘Stamp Out Fraud’, highlighted the main fraud issues within the different sectors of the industry (without tips on how to do it) for the first time.Since 2008 PROFiT has, through its work with the City of London Police, made several contributions to the travel section of the UK Threat Assessment of Organised Crime produced by the Home Office.

During 2010 The City of London Police and PROFiT formed the Travel Tactical Group. The City of London Police economic crime directorate are the ‘lead force’ for economic crime enforcement within the UK. The Tactical Group identifies organised crimes within the travel sector and promotes disruption or prosecution. Many successful Police investigations have resulted from this work.

During 2010 PROFiT founder members identified a problem with the UK participation in the annual HAJJ pilgrimage. Working with the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau we established the nature and scope of
the problem and also some inconsistencies with the recording and action by Police.The result was a press release and guidance note issued with the City of London Police which has improved public and Police awareness and provided guidance within communities on how to avoid fraud.

During 2012 PROFiT commissioned Troy Managed Services to devise a number of training courses specifically for the travel sector. By combining PROFiT’s knowledge of the types of fraud each sector suffers with Troy’s expertise in economic crime training we have developed a number of cost effective, flexible, courses for the industry.

PROFiT has been invited to speak at trade fairs and conferences. Some examples are the Association of Chief Police Officers National Fraud Forum held at Amersham in 2009; The European Aviation conference in Berlin 2011 and the Europe Talks Tickets conference (ETT) in Madrid 2012.