Ahmed pleaded guilty to seven of the 11 offences she was charged with, including fraud by abuse of position and perverting the course of justice.
Detective inspector Nichola Meghji, from the fraud operations team at City of London Police, said: “In any organisation, employees depend on their human resources department to be upstanding with a strong moral compass, to have great judgement and to be impartial and honest in their decision making. Sadly, in the case of Farah Ahmed, this couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Moving forward from such a breach of trust can be hard, according to Kate Palmer, employment services director at HR consultancy Peninsula.
“When an employee so seriously breaks the trust placed in them by their employer, it can have far-reaching repercussions across the business. Knowing how to recover from it can be difficult,” she told HR magazine.
Palmer suggested implementing payment checks: “[Employers can put] a checking process in place, where payments or transactions over a certain value must be approved by more than one employee. They could also ensure that accurate logs are kept of all transactions, and that they are reviewed periodically, and on an ad hoc basis, to discourage anyone from trying to hide their fraud.”
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Charles Cotton, the CIPD's senior reward adviser, said that HR leaders should proactively prevent fraud by using risk assessments.
He told HR magazine: “Employers must conduct risk assessments to identify which parts of the organisation are exposed to the threat of external or internal fraudulent activity.
“HR has an important role in this, working with colleagues in finance and IT, to put processes in place to reduce the dangers of fraud, such as training to help staff identify potential cybercrime, or using HR and payroll data to identify potential hazards.
“It’s also important that managers stress to staff that fraud is not a victimless crime and can have a negative impact on the reward spend.”
In November 2019, Ahmed was dismissed from her work after a formal complaint was made by the office manager.
After Ahmed was dismissed, four additional invoices were found in her office that had not been processed and were dated after her dismissal. If she had not been dismissed and her fraudulent activity had not been uncovered, this was likely to have resulted in further losses, according to a statement from the City of London Police.
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Ahmed used an email hacking tool to attempt to hack the email of the managing director of a company she worked at between 2015 and 2017.
Palmer said that having in place a robust policy to deal with employee fraud is essential.
She added: “This could be a disciplinary procedure, employee code of conduct, or something more specific. It should clearly set out the expectations on employees, and the consequences of fraudulent activity. Should it become necessary to take action in relation to any fraud, these policies should be followed robustly, to deter others from doing the same.”
She emphasised that HR employees should be subject to the same standards as others: “Functions such as HR are generally thought of as the moral heart of the company. But those within the team should be subject to the same scrutiny and processes as any other employee.
“HR employees, more than most, are aware of the consequences of their actions, and they should not be exempt from the full force of internal policies being applied to them.”
