Legal advice on serious fraud allegations

If you find yourself, or someone connected to your business, becoming the subject of a serious fraud investigation, we'd advise you to get legal representation immediately – First4Lawyers can help.

What is serious fraud?

Fraud is defined as dishonest actions that result in potential or actual financial loss to any person or entity.

This includes theft of money or property, either by employees or people who don’t work for the company, by means of deception.

Serious (or complex) fraud is defined using a number of criteria:

• Nature and cost
  Have a large number of people been affected by the offence? Has there been significant impact on the victims of the fraud?
• Scale
  Is the crime likely to undermine public confidence in the integrity of the UK’s financial markets?
• Financial, factual, or legal complexity
  Is the investigation beyond the means of most other law enforcement agencies?
• Nature of the public interest
  This usually relates to alleged fraud involving public officials. This is considered to be in the public interest as it could undermine public confidence in the government.

What are the different types of fraud?

There are many different kinds of serious fraud. These include:

• Asset stripping
  This involves taking company funds or valuable assets and leaving behind debts.
• Fraudulent trading
  This occurs when a company does business with the intention of defrauding creditors or customers for fraudulent purposes.
• Share ramping
  Also referred to as 'book ramping' and ‘pump and dump’. This involves influencing the share price of a company for one’s own profit.
• Publishing false information
  This involves creating, destroying, concealing or falsifying accounts, report or records with the intention to mislead people about the company's financial position.
• Corporate corruption
  This could involve offering bribes to individuals, agencies, or institutions in order to win a contract.

What are the penalties for serious fraud?

The Fraud Act 2006 states that those making and/or supplying articles for fraudulent means, and those conspiring to defraud face both a fine and up to ten years in prison.

Those obtaining services through dishonest means, or who possess articles for use in frauds will be punished with up to five years in prison and/or a fine.

Corporate offenders convicted of fraud will receive sentences defined by the UK Sentencing Council.

I am under investigation for serious fraud – what should I do?

You should start by seeking the advice of our solicitors, who specialise in fraud cases. The solicitors we work with deal with all areas from tax evasion, to money laundering and multi-million pound fraud, through to boiler room operations and investment fraud.

Get in touch with our advisors, who will review your case for free.