Wednesday 12th November, 2014

The British Heart Foundation (BHF) will be implementing tighter controls to prevent future cases of fraud against the charity after a former employee submitted false invoices.

This follows the court hearing of Michael Young, a delivery driver who defrauded the charity out of £20,000. He has been given until the end of the year re-pay the money and will be sentenced in early December.

Thirty-four-year-old Young, submitted invoices for work up to ten months after his contract ended. His scheme was discovered after he phoned the charity to ask why one of his fake invoices was not processed.

Commenting in Civil Society Media, BHF retail director, Mike Taylor, said: "We are saddened that anyone would seek to defraud a charity. We will take every step possible to recover all of the money so we can continue our life-saving work into the fight against heart disease.

A spokesperson for BHF said the charity plans to make additional checks when payments are made and will change the way that invoices are processed.

BHF is not the only charity to experience accounting fraud this year. In March this year Oxfam's former anti-fraud officer defrauded the charity out of nearly £65,000, and in May an RNLI employee was arrested on suspicion of fraud.

According to the National Fraud Authority's (NFA) annual fraud indicator registered charities are estimated to lose £1.1bn to fraud, which equates to 1.7% of their annual income for 2010/11.