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Rich Wentel

Deputy Director

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About

Rich oversees the delivery of:

  • the National Fraud Initiative – delivering on average over £200m in counter fraud savings to government every 2-year cycle by providing a widespread data matching service to over 1100 user organisations including local authorities, NHS trusts and increasing private sector users.
  • The delivery of the Cabinet Office Counter Fraud Data Analytics Programme supporting BEIS and British Business Bank to detect/recover and prevent fraud in the BEIS C-19 loan portfolio, most notably Bounce Back Loans with audited benefits from this work totalling over £55m to date
  • The development of the PSFA’s Counter Fraud Data Analytics Service to provide the expert capability to wider government and to build functionality to address key counter fraud priorities as well as working with the Financial sector to utilise effective risking based on government data to detect fraud and financial crime risks
  • The Fraud and Debt provisions within the Digital Economy Act legislation as a permissive data sharing gateway, encouraging and supporting departments to undertake data sharing to address fraud and debt risks
  • The PSFA’s Intelligence function is to maximise the use of an impact from public sector intelligence

Prior to starting his law enforcement career Rich was an academic researcher and lived in Japan. He started his career in law enforcement in 1999 as an Intelligence Analyst in Northumbria Police and the National Crime Squad before joining HM Customs and Excise in 2001 as a frontline criminal investigator. He worked on a wide variety of tax and customs cases, including oils, excise/tobacco, VAT, money laundering and drugs cases. This included spells working in Covert Operations, dedicated surveillance teams and overseas work. He was promoted to SIO in 2009, firstly in a strategic role supporting the Head of the Region, and then as operational SIO leading investigation teams.

From 2013 to 2016 Rich were the Assistant Director in three FIS branches (Newcastle, Solihull and Manchester) leading Organised Crime, Volume and Offshore cases. He also was the HMRC lead for Disclosure and NCND policy.

From 2016 to 2019 Rich was Head of Learning and Capability for Fraud Investigation Service (FIS) within Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, leading the development and delivery of all aspects of Criminal Justice and civil investigation training within HMRC, including leading the Criminal Justice Academy and leading the development of the Counter Fraud Investigator Apprenticeship across Government. During this time Rich also acted as the HMRC representative on the Government Counter Fraud Profession Board and the Counter Fraud Function Board.