Telecoms dealers scam extra commission

Recession-hit salesmen and dealers selling pay TV and telephone contracts are increasingly attempting to scam commission, Neural Technologies claimed this week.

Identity fraud, abuse of commission schemes, and violation of pre-post-dated cheques by dealers are all on the rise, Neural Technologies said.

“There has been much publicity lately about the increase globally in internal fraud due to the current financial climate,” said Luke Taylor, Neural Technologies spokesperson.

“Dealer fraud is just another variant of internal fraud.

“Many cases involve the abuse of commission and incentive schemes, for example: creation of false subscriptions; reactivation of old accounts (flipping); and exploitation of weak or non-existent claw back controls or processes.

“Other cases involve the stock itself, such as stealing and selling of stock, cloning of SIMs, handset unlocking and IMEI identity changing”.

To tackle dealer fraud, Neural Technologies suggests segregating duties, to ensure that no single person is given too much authority; independent audits of sales activities; an authorisation policy for special offers; and automating sales processes as far as possible.

“As a minimum we would suggest operators review the sales for their top ten dealers each month to check for: similar names and addresses; accounts that are sold excessive or abnormal usage; and accounts that have been declined and later re-submitted,” Taylor said.

“We also suggest examining the connections which were terminated for fraud just after a dealer has been paid commission, and which subscriptions have been barred for fraud/ bad debt and matching them up to the dealers to see if there is a recurring pattern”.