PROGRAM TARGETS WHITE COLLAR CRIME

An anonymous tip in 2006 led York Regional Police to marijuana grow
operations across the GTA.

In 2008, after two years of investigation, police during a news
conference said they had raided several grow ops and a plant store
near Vaughan and made several arrests as part of the probe.

It was months later that investigators further alleged that someone
had walked into two financing companies and used forged documents to
buy properties in Richmond Hill and Aurora, which were then converted
into pot-growing operations. The homes went into default and were
seized by the finance companies, police said.

While many people across Canada are employed by government and the
private sector to probe financial crime, there is a lack of
co-ordination and standardization among them, according to Matthew
McGuire, a former intelligence officer at FINTRAC (Financial
Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada) - Canada's
financial intelligence agency - who is now a financial crime director
of Williams McGuire, a financial crime consulting firm in Markham.

He believes financial and white-collar crime is on the rise in
Canada.

It can include card skimming, mortgage fraud and identity theft.
Financial crime can be used to finance terrorism, he added.

"These are things that must be detected and acted upon," he
said.

The company has partnered with Seneca College to establish the
Canadian Institute for Financial Crime Analysis.

Through a six-course certificate program, students will be provided
with training, applied research in financial crime methods and trends
and online access to networking opportunities and industry
information, among other things.

"Everywhere out there, you can find anecdotes about what fraud looks
like," Mr. McGuire said.

But nowhere has anyone created an exhaustive list of fraud types and
put them together with actual transactions that show the tell-tale
signs of those frauds.

Financial crime is big business in Canada.

Last year, $500 million in debit and credit card fraud was recorded in
Canada, Mr. McGuire said.

"That's the thing that keeps our interest rates high," he
said.

Billions of dollars were also laundered through this country in the
last 12 months, he added.

"Think about how the profits of that money is furthering organized
crime."

First responders to financial crime are often the people working for
debit and credit card companies and the program was designed with them
in mind.

Dr. David Hicks has been appointed professor and chairperson of the
institute. Dr. Hicks, who has spent his academic career researching
and teaching about organized crime, money laundering and community
safety, has been tapped to co-ordinate the academic and research programs.

A current weakness in identifying financial crime is a lack of sharing
of information among financial institutions, he said.

For example, if a large Canadian bank identifies a problem with
mortgage fraud, they may develop a system to identify that problem
quickly and put a stop to it, he said.

But, unless that information is shared, the perpetrators may simply
try their scheme out on another financial institution.

"Without a systematic sharing of information at a strategic level,
you're sort of stuck with leaving these gaps wide open for offenders,"
Dr. Hicks said.

He cited marijuana grow operators, who may be involved in or
affiliated with organized crime, purchasing large homes in
neighbourhoods with mortgage documents that may have been obtained
through identity theft.

"There's a big problem with sharing that information and there's a big
problem with people dealing with these things in isolation," he said.

"People will see different aspects of the problem and deal with it,
but really we're being overwhelmed with this because there are too
many gaps and not enough of the right people who know about this ...
and how to deal with it in a more co-ordinated way."

The Town of Markham has been supportive of the institute, said Stephen
Chait, the town's director of economic development.

The town hopes its support of the institute will help establish
Markham as a destination for financial services training and
certification, he said.

Enrollment for the program will begin this month and classes will
start in September, said Seneca's Samky Mak.

The plan is to eventually build and equip the Markham campus of Seneca
with a lab for the institute, but for now the college will use
existing resources, Mr. Mak said.

For more information visit www.senecac.on.ca/school/cfs/cifca/index.html