Somerset County Council

Data Analysis Reveals Fraud

Services

Drainage | Gully

Solutions

Software

The Problem

Suspected glitch in gully image recordings

The recording of multiple images on a gully cleanse programme, raised concerns for the gully programmers.

Somerset County Council maintenance teams raised a support request with KaarbonTech when they believed that there was a glitch in the Gully SMART software.

They questioned whether the data uploaded into the KaarbonTech system could be incorrectly displayed.

Their concern was that there was a full range of remarkably similar-looking photos of gully grates in the programme, recorded as dealt with.

Fortunately, the data does not lie.

Our Approach

Detecting fraud through data analysis

KaarbonTech support staff scrutinised the data, using software records and GPS.

The KaarbonTech support team advised that it was very unlikely to be a system error but began its investigation on behalf of the Council. Notably, the photos were taken at different angles and from varying distances, indicating a deliberate attempt to confuse the reviewer. Further analysis highlighted that GPS locations were not in the vicinity of the site of the photos, some taken as far as 5km away. Clearly, there was fraudulent activity taking place.

The Result

Fraudulent subcontractor removed with GPS evidence

Fraudulent activity was confirmed, and the offending subcontractor was removed from the contract.

KaarbonTech support is invaluable when concerns are raised over productivity. Using GPS data to establish the distances of gully locations against uploaded photographs, gave the evidence necessary to remove dishonest subcontractors from the service.