The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) is at the forefront of combating the threats Australia faces from serious and organised crime. Our work exposes the complex and ever-shifting nature of these threats and we share our intelligence and work with a range of partners to make Australia hostile to criminals who seek to do our country harm.
Serious and organised crime impacting Australia affects everyone. It threatens community safety and wellbeing, undermines our financial and tax systems and harms our most vulnerable people by defrauding the programs designed to support them.
These criminals, whether offshore or onshore, have reach into our communities. The threat they pose isn’t always visible, but the results can be seen in devastated families losing loved ones to drug addiction, damaged communities as a result of violence inspired by greed, lost income to fraud or scams, pressure on our healthcare system and erosion of public trust. Money that would be circulating in the legitimate economy supporting social programs is skilfully diverted to fund the lavish lifestyles of criminals offshore.
Our intelligence shows that serious and organised fraud against the government payments and programs is often linked to other offending, such as illegal phoenix activity, tax evasion and money laundering. Either knowingly or unknowingly, professional facilitators are helping serious and organised crime syndicates to defraud these programs, and are preventing payments and assistance reaching those who need it.
In 2019 and 2020, the ACIC worked with Commonwealth and state education departments and law enforcement partners to dismantle serious and organised crime networks involved in large-scale family day care fraud. The criminal networks worked by setting up family day care centres that looked like legitimate businesses from the outside, but on the inside every level of the operation was complicit in the fraud. Members of the criminal network claimed millions in Child Care Subsidy payments annually from the Australian Government.
Our intelligence identified that serious and organised crime networks such as these will also ‘scheme-hop’ – moving from one government scheme to another in order to defraud programs designed to safeguard the most vulnerable people in the Australian community.
The ACIC-hosted Fraud Fusion Centre shares intelligence with a broad range of agencies about serious financial crime. Over the last year, this included highlighting networks suspected of fraud against the National Disability Insurance Scheme, some of which had a presence in other programs such as charities, aged care and family day care.
ACIC intelligence revealed that serious and organised crime networks were using incentive payments or ‘kickbacks’ to commit fraud against the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), as well as colluding with allied health professionals and/or prospective NDIS participants. NDIS participants receiving incentive payments from serious organised crime networks likely exist on a scale of enabling behaviour, ranging from collusion to coercion — and some are highly likely unaware they are involved in NDIS fraud.
The ACIC works closely with our partners at Services Australia, the Department of Education, Australian Federal Police and others, to prevent serious and organised crime networks from exploiting individuals to defraud government payments and programs. Various fraud prevention initiatives are underway through enhanced intelligence sharing and coordinated activity bilaterally and within the Fraud Fusion Taskforce. These initiatives are aimed at ensuring early detection of serious organised crime entities involvement in government payments and programs and ensuring appropriate coordination and intervention activity.
Protecting Australians and Australian interests from serious and organised crime requires a whole-of-government response. ACIC intelligence plays a crucial role in guiding the decisions and actions of Commonwealth, state and territory, and international partners to disrupt criminal networks.
Heather Cook
Chief Executive Officer
Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission