Fraud is the use of deception to create or obtain a dishonest advantage or benefit. In my years investigating fraudulent schemes and behaviour it is apparent that frauds are opportunistic or planned, in fact criminally masterminded. The perpetrators (criminals/fraudsters) of fraud are varied in age, appearance, socio-economic status, and culture. Fraudsters are most likely to […] The post FRAUD – THE ULTIMATE DECEPTION Why do people become fraudsters? appeared first on Ocean Road Magazine ..read more

Two-time Gold Walkley award-winning journalist Hedley Thomas has released his latest investigative podcast for The Australian focusing on a 31-year-old cold case from Lennox Head in the Northern Rivers region of NSW. Called simply ‘Bronwyn’, the podcast series will explore the 1993 disappearance of Bronwyn Winfield from her home in Lennox Head when she was just 31 years old, leaving behind two young children aged five and 10. Her estranged husband, Jon Winfield, reported her missing to police 11 days later. She has never been seen or heard from again. Inquest to be held into missing Lennox H ..read more

Life in the beautiful country town of Leeton was positively humming for young, soon-to-be-married teacher Stephanie Scott, who had everything to look forward to until a tragic turn of events on the eve of her wedding over the Easter long weekend of 2015. STEPHANIE Clare Scott was born on October 14, 1988, in Sydney. By Easter 2015, she was an enthusiastic and much-loved drama teacher at Leeton High School, in NSW’s Riverina region. The daughter of Robert (Bob) and Merrilyn Scott, Stephanie had two sisters and two brothers. Her father was the Deputy Principal at Canowindra High School, where Aa ..read more

By Detective Senior Sergeant Chris Knight, Queensland Police Homicide Investigation Unit; and Detective Senior Sergeant Paul Fletcher, Logan Child Protection & Investigation Unit   ABOUT THE AUTHORS   Detective Senior Sergeant Chris Knight joined the Qld Police Service in 1990 and for most of his service since 1992 has performed duty in a range of investigative positions including covert operation and several C.I.B positions in both Metropolitan plus rural and remote districts.  Since 2009 Detective KNIGHT has been appointed to State Crime Command and during that time ..read more

With the advancement of technology and the use of electronic means of business, the days of old-fashioned fraudsters and criminals is vanishing, but their ingenuity is not. A few years ago, I found myself in a poorly air-conditioned demountable office on site in Kalimantan, Indonesia, sifting through handwritten receipts, some of which were on the back of what appeared to be grocery and fuel dockets. The handwritten scrawl, when translated from Bahasa Indonesia to English in summary read, “spiritual doctor”.  It seemed that the company I was investigating was paying for the services of a ..read more

THE CHALLENGE As electronic devices get smaller and faster, and would-be criminals attempting to cover their tracks get smarter, law enforcement faces unique challenges in identifying and collecting hidden storage devices containing critical evidence. Criminals increasingly use devices with memory storage, such as mobile phones, SIM cards, USBs, SD cards and hard drives when they plan and carry out their criminal activities. Many of these devices can also contain harmful material like malware, sensitive content and intellectual property. This challenge affects investigations across all crime t ..read more

Ocean Road contributor Chris Nyst is not only a high-flying legal eagle but an award-winning novelist and screenwriter. His riotously-funny movie, Gettin’ Square – a crime comedy set on the Gold Coast – scooped the 2003 Australian film industry awards. More recently, his third novel, the highly-acclaimed Crook as Rookwood, won Australia’s premier gong for crime fiction, the prestigious Ned Kelly Award. Chris’s latest novel, Millen, features the same prickly Gold Coast lawyer, Eddie Moran, who appeared in his earlier books. This time, Eddie finds himself stuck in the far-flung Queensland outbac ..read more

True crime researcher Greg Fox presents his “Top Ten” list of the most baffling unsolved murders from the glitter strip…a paradise where malevolence resides beneath its shiny exterior. Many “cold cases” await resolution in our own backyard…here are five of the ten most intriguing. Will there ever be resolution for these victim’s families? Justice may be derived from continued police re-investigations via their cold case squads, the use of the powerful advances in DNA analysis and genetic genealogies – as well as law enforcement’s interaction with the general public, including online web detect ..read more

In the early 1980s, an epidemic of heroin use swept Australia. So, as a young Gold Coast lawyer taking whatever work came through the door, I spent a lot of time in courts appearing for hopeless, out-of-luck junkies caught up in the criminal justice system. It was a tough gig at times, but it also presented a fascinating window into the human condition. Twenty years or so later, the world had changed exponentially. Those original junkies had mostly died off or moved on, a ‘heroin drought’ was gripping the country, and my practice had gone in a completely different direction. Around that time ..read more

Every day more news breaks with a shocking latest story about youth crime. What’s going on? What’s at the heart of the problem? And how on earth did we end up here? Corrine Barraclough reports. Anger has spilled out onto Queensland streets as hundreds of locals repeatedly protest the state’s youth crime laws and escalating crisis. New youth crime laws were introduced in March, and since then there have been more than 1900 charges for breach of bail. Reoffending has hit an alarming rate of 69 per cent. Protestors in Brisbane marched to Parliament House and handed a six-point plan to the youth j ..read more