Source: Home Office published on this website Monday 4 March 2024 by Jill Powell

Efforts to disrupt money mule activity and support exploited victims will be strengthened through a 22-point action plan announced by the Security Minister, Tom Tugendhat, today (1 March 2024). The plan will include a newly funded post at The Children’s Society to raise awareness of child financial exploitation and will also step-up joint working to identify complicit mules through the sharing of intelligence.

A money mule is someone who moves and hides illegally gained money on behalf of heinous criminals, including drug dealers, human traffickers and fraudsters.

Cifas estimates that there were 37,000 bank accounts which demonstrated behaviour associated with muling in 2023. Approximately £10 billion of illegal money is laundered each year in the UK, according to estimates from the National Crime Agency (NCA).

Around 23% of money mules are under 21, and 65% are under 30. They are often groomed by criminal gangs, who offer them the prospect of making easy money. Once they are in the system, the gangs will then coerce them into committing further offending, including through blackmail, debt bondage and sextortion.

That is why the government is funding a new Financial Exploitation Lead at The Children’s Society who will spearhead a growing movement to educate those on the front-line, including bank employees, teachers and the police. Its work will ensure thousands of children who are at risk of being exploited by criminal gangs get the support they need. 

The government is publishing new frontline guidance that will enable practitioners to recognise and respond to financial exploitation linked to money laundering so that victims, and potential victims, can get the protection and support they need.

The work of The Children’s Society is one part of the 22-point money mules action plan, which will protect the public, further our understanding of the threat posed by money mules, safeguard victims, pursue criminal gangs and disrupt the flow of money.

The National Economic Crime Centre (NECC), in the NCA, is already working closely with policing and the private sector, as well as those based across the continent, to crack down on money muling. In the money mules action plan, the NCA has committed to delivering a public awareness campaign on money muling, as well as to continue working with the Home Office, private sector and third sector partners on a money mules online hub, which will contain guidance, advice and support on the topic.

Nick Sharp, Deputy Director of the National Economic Crime Centre (NECC), said:

“Money muling is used by organised criminals to conceal the profits of some of the most serious crimes in the UK. At the NECC, we work tirelessly with our colleagues in policing and in the private sector, both in the UK and across Europe, to stem the flow of illicit funds.

“We know that a substantial proportion of money mules are under the age of 30, and many are groomed or coerced into providing the service while at sixth form, college or university. Those involved put themselves and those around them at risk by communicating with dangerous criminals, and by becoming complicit in serious and organised crime.  We are proud to be working with the government to prevent more young people being exploited, and raise awareness of what is a significant threat to the public.”

To further enhance co-operation between operational partners in this space, the City of London Police will establish a new intelligence unit to improve the police response to money mules and laundering money gained through fraud. This new unit will target money mule herders specifically, and feed intelligence into the regional organised crime unit (ROCU).

New regulations for schools in next stage of attendance drive

Source: Department for Education published on this website Thursday 29 February 2024 by Jill Powell

Every state school in England will now share their daily attendance registers across the education sector - including with the department for education, councils, and trusts in the next stage of the government’s drive to reduce pupil absence in school.

The sharing of daily school registers will form a new world-leading attendance data set that will help schools spot and support children displaying worrying trends of persistent absence or those in danger of becoming missing in education.

Schools, trusts and councils will be able to access this data via an interactive secure data dashboard maintained by the department for education. This will allow them easy use of the data to not only spot pupils in need of support but also to understand how their attendance position compares locally and nationally so they can look at where they might need to drive improvements.  

These reforms are the next phase in the government’s plan to improve attendance following the pandemic which has seen a worldwide rise in absence and persistent absence driven by broken habits of attendance, and new and exacerbated barriers like mental ill health.

The government’s plan to improve attendance has included expanding the attendance hubs programme to 32 hubs across the country, which share best practice to schools supporting more than one million pupils, plus piloting attendance mentors, who work directly with pupils to tackle their barriers to attendance alongside a national awareness campaign aimed at helping parents. Our plan is already working, with 380,000 fewer pupils persistently off school over the course of last year.

Parent fines for unauthorised absences will also be brought under a national framework to help tackle inconsistencies in their use. A fine to parents must be considered if a child misses 5 days of school for unauthorised absence. Alongside this, costs for fines will go up from £60 to £80 if paid within 21 days and from £120 to £160 if paid in 28 days which will ensure all parents are aware of when they might face a fine to ensure all councils are issuing fines appropriately. 

Today the Department for Education has also announced Rob Tarn, CEO of Northern Education Trust and the founder of England’s first attendance hub, as the new national attendance ambassador. Rob will work with schools and school leaders to champion attendance, share effective practice, and support the ongoing development of the attendance hubs programme nationally.

Key guidance setting out how schools and local authorities must take a ‘support-first’ approach to help pupils and their families to tackle barriers to attendance will be made statutory from August 2024.  The working together to improve school attendance guidance sets expectations including regular meetings between schools and local authorities to agree plans for the most at-risk absent children.  

It particularly emphasises the importance of support for pupils with SEND and mental ill health who often need more individual consideration due to wider barriers. It asks schools, local authorities and wider services to work together to support these pupils, encouraging early intervention and close working with families to address their individual needs.  

Source: The Angolini Independent Inquiry published on this website Friday 1 March 2024 by Jill Powell

An independent inquiry into how an off-duty Metropolitan police officer was able to abduct, rape and murder a member of the public. This is to ensure the victim’s family and public get a full explanation of the causes of, and factors contributing to, this tragic and harrowing murder.

Part 1 is focussed on examining Wayne Couzens’ career and previous behaviour. It will establish a definitive account of his conduct, behaviour and performance leading up to his conviction, as well as any opportunities missed such as decision making relating to vetting.

Following the sentencing of former police officer David Carrick in February 2023, the Inquiry is also examining the Carrick case to establish an understanding of Carrick’s career and previous conduct.

Part 2 of the Inquiry addresses broader issues raised by both cases in respect of policing and the protection of women.

Source: Crown Prosecution Service published on this website Wednesday 28 February 2024 by Jill Powell

The second moderator of a dark web forum for sharing indecent pictures of children to be jailed within a week has today received five years and four months in prison.

William Yates, 45, admitted running The Annex, a membership-only forum which hosted a number of areas dedicated to child sexual abuse. The site worked by promoting users from guests to members by live chat participation and sharing imagery.

Investigators in Germany started focusing on The Annex in 2019 and seized servers in Romania and Moldova. From this they were able to identify the hierarchy of the management as well as users.

CPS prosecutors have been involved since the early stages of the investigation, providing legal advice to the National Crime Agency as well as liaising with law enforcement bodies across the world. The purpose of this was to ensure all suspects identified in England and Wales would face justice for their roles in the illegal sites and global distribution of images of child abuse.

Lawyers also looked through the evidence collected in order to demonstrate the scale of the offenders’ illegal acts, in order for them to face the appropriate sentence and to protect children in the future from sexual abuse.

One user – “yates704” – acted as a Gateway Assistant Moderator. An investigation by the National Crime Agency found that the user was a 42-year-old man calling himself Martin Yates. Further work helped officers identify Yates’s IP address and his physical address in Eastbourne, Sussex.

The seized server showed Yates had engaged in more than 6,000 private messages with other Annex users between March and September 2020, ranging from fantasy role play to providing advice to users on how to post indecent images of children.

Images that Yates had posted were uncovered by police in Australia and an FBI investigation in the United States of America revealed WhatsApp videos of Yates.

When he was interviewed Yates admitted being an Annex user since 2019. He had been offered a role as a staff member and then as moderator, where he would promote or demote users.

Specialist prosecutor Emma Lile, of the CPS Organised Child Sexual Abuse Unit, said:

“Yates worked his way up the site’s hierarchy by posting indecent content, then encouraged others to do the same. Our international work was vital in ensuring we had a strong case against Yates so that he will no longer be able to spread imagery or encourage the abuse of children.”

Nathan Bake, 28, from Runcorn, was the second in command of the Annex and had been since November 2022. On February 14, he was jailed for 16 years.

Bake’s role was to encourage users to keep the site busy. He posted more than 600 times over a 10-week period from August to October 2022, but had been a member for two-and-a-half years. Bake’s messages linked to indecent images of children.

He was also a head moderator of another site providing a number of links to child exploitation sites and a co-creator of a further website, which had the sole purpose of discussing and posting indecent images of children.
Bake was identified after FBI officers obtained a copy of the server hosting The Annex. When his home and devices were searched by NCA officers, they discovered more than 3.5 million images including some classed as extreme, as well as a paedophile manual.

The majority of defendants identified are facing justice in America. Yates is the third to be sentenced in the UK, following Bake and Kabir Garg, 33, a junior doctor from Lewisham, London, who received a six-year jail term in June last year. Garg was fourth or fifth in the hierarchy of The Annex.

Nicola Haywood, unit head of the Organised Child Sexual Abuse Unit at the CPS, said:

“These online organisers of child sexual abuse thought they could hide under anonymity on the dark web. But thanks to the expertise of lawyers at the CPS Organised Child Sexual Abuse Unit, through coordination of international investigations, we have been able to unravel their senior roles within this atrocious website and ensure they face justice and help stop further abuse.”