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Due diligence: dodgy documents fool many
BIScom News
Friday 05 March 2010

The story of the fraudulent (or fake, depending on which representative of the UK Government is making a statement) passports used by (alleged) Mossad agents to enter Dubai just one aspect a wider documents problem.

It would be difficult, one would think, for a commercial airline pilot to work for 13 years with only a light aircraft licence - which was expired for much of that time. Yet that is exactly what an un-named Swede, living in Milan and flying for the past two years for a Turkish Airline is said to admit to having done.

Or how about Emma Charlton, the somewhat chunky woman who used to be known as Emma Golightly. Whether that was a fanciful view of herself as having a part in Breakfast At Tiffanies or irony, one cannot tell. Actually, Golightly was her real name: she changed it, by deed poll, to Charlton after she was released from jail in 2007. She had been serving a sentence for fraud.

Then Charlton started to weave a fabricated life: she started by telling people her father was a judge, that she was a manager at a chain store, that she had recently married a soldier - and that she was suffering from cancer which was terminal. Oh, and that she had been born in Africa, was adopted, that she was a photographer whose work was featured in Vogue magazine, that she was the editor of Vogue,

Of this only the bit about the chain store was true - well, sort of. She wasn't a manager, she lied about her past to get the job and she was sacked for not turning up to work.

She found men who she could dupe: the previous charges related to five who she took for a total of GBP250,000.

In the latest round, she stole cheques from her fiance - who had no idea what was going on, totally taken in by her tales - and the fact that she had a little dog like rich women do (apparently) and her grandmother, issuing them for as much as GBP10,000. She used stolen money and credit cards to buy jewellery and other items that she then sold to second-hand-goods chain CashConverters, apparently without question.

It's not expensive to create a false identity, obviously.

Obviously, that is, unless one is the British government. A man who, as a youth, murdered a child in the most horrible circumstances has been given a replacement identity and released into the community on parole with a number of conditions. Jon Venables was abolished, to all intents and purposes, in 2001 and a new, bulletproof identity created in its place. But this week, due to infractions of his parole, he's been recalled to jail. It is said that there is little chance that his new identity will remain intact. That means that he will need another new identity - at a cost that some estimate of GBP250,000.

That can't be right: criminals everywhere can get false identities that work for a couple of thousand pounds. Surely there's someone that can put Venables in touch with the kind of people who make this happen?

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The above blog article is a terrific representation of how not knowing enough about the parties with whom you engage in business activities can place you or your organization at risk.

The LUBRINCO Group can assist firms in performing Due Diligence Investigations (Domestically in USA or Internationally) to help firms avoid the risks associated with not adequately knowing your customers, your employees or vendors or not adequately knowing counterparites with whom you are involved.