Sponsored by
Scam that was 'just another part of the job'
THE generation of false calls by BT staff became so endemic that call centre supervisors would even make a call and then scuttle round to another desk to answer it themselves.
The almost comical picture of how the fraud became completely routine is revealed in one of a stream of formal statements given by BT staff during an investigation launched by the company in December 2005.
Martin Pickering, who worked at the Wakefield call centre since 1999, said that supervisors, himself included, would regularly generate calls from a front desk which would then be answered by an adviser working nearby.
He said: "It is a practice that has become simple common practice over the years – something we are expected to do on a daily basis.
"I even recall supervisors generating a call and then moving to an operational desk to answer it themselves.
"The supervisors would be given a list of all the main base contact numbers and told to dial perhaps 10 each from a selection of bases so that it didn't look as though all generated calls were coming from the same base and hence raise suspicions.
"There cannot possibly have been an operator or supervisor who did not know that this was going on. The whole thing was a nuisance to us all and then along came the auto-dialler."
Mr Pickering then detailed how two computers were set up at the Wakefield centre in 2004 to automatically dial numbers to generate the calls needed to boost performance figures.
If a certain percentage of calls wasn't answered within a prescribed time, BT faced contractual penalties. One computer dialled to Wakefield-managed MoD sites and the other to sites managed by a call centre in St Helens.
Another call centre worker at Wakefield, Damien Smith, told the investigation that he had designed his own pro-forma to log all the false calls he needed to make on a given shift. He said he could make up to 360 such calls on a shift and produced a pro-forma as evidence he had phoned the 100 number for operator service at Wakefield 330 times on one particular shift.
Phillip Gwilliam, a former agency employee who blew the whistle on the practice in the autumn of 2005, said the generation of false calls had existed since he joined the BT call centre in St Helens in October 2000 until he left in October 2005.
He explained that team leaders "would dial up an MoD base and the call having reached the base would 'bounce' back to our office. The adviser receiving the call would simply be told it was a test call.... and the call would be cleared down."
It was often carried out at weekends or at night. Describing her first weekend shift in 2002 at St Helens, Emma Louise Bailie said: "I was asked by one of the supervisors... to come offline and start dialling 100 calls from the duty desk. I just sat, with another operator whose name I cannot remember, constantly dialling out to military base numbers call after call after call throughout my shifts over that weekend.
"Call generation to recover failing percentage calls answered stats almost always occurred in the last week of the month. I knew this was a wrong thing to do but I was junior, I was agency and I didn't have the courage to raise it with BT management.
"The practice of generating calls in this way was such common knowledge and practice that I cannot believe that anybody working with the call centres at any level didn't know about it."
'Shameful situation' for company
A CONFIDENTIAL BT investigation report reveals the huge scale of the fraud perpetrated by managers and staff operating the call centre contract with the Ministry of Defence.
The report, drawn up in February 2006, confirms BT's belief that millions of false calls were generated to falsify the company's performance and avoid contract penalties.
Even then, this number only related to a three-year period between 2002 and 2005 when other internal BT communications acknowledge the fraud actually began in 1999.
It says the "best guess" on the number of false calls is based on the testimony of witnesses who admitted the fraud.
One manager said up to 70,000 calls were made per week while another said "hundreds of thousands" were made to correct a single month's figures.
The report concludes: "Over a three-year minimum period during which falsifying (PCA) Percentage Calls Answered was 'business as usual' it follows that the total false call numbers ran to the order of millions."
One of the five managers sacked for the fraud, Joseph Hewson, who was based at the Wakefield centre, told an employment tribunal last week that he was simply carrying out orders and that a bullying culture stopped anyone from speaking out.
The report notes that an informant who blew the whistle in 2004 – which led to an internal BT inquiry which found nothing wrong – said "that people who stood up and complained were sacked and threatened with legal action.
"In the light of what we have discovered, his statement is now highly plausible.
"It stands very much to reason that bullying and intimidation was the force which 'kept the lid' on this matter for so many years – a truly shameful situation in a company which prides itself on its business ethics and publicly denounces such behaviour."
Among the emails obtained by the Yorkshire Post is one from Robin
Armstrong, who ran an internal operation to manage the fallout from the fraud, written on October 6 last year to Jeremy Stafford, head of BT's contracts with the UK government and three other managers which notes the "positive" news that the final cost of the settlement with the MoD over the fraud "is likely to be less than 2m".
Negotiations between BT and the MoD on the final settlement are continuing.
'Move on' hint over director who ran contract with MoD
A SENIOR BT manager suggested the director awarded an MBE after helping to set up and run a 1bn contract with the MoD "should be moved on" after the scale of the fraud was discovered.
The reference to John Seale MBE is contained in an email from Robin Armstrong, who was running BT's Operation Trenale, set up to manage the fallout from the fraud.
The email, sent on August 1 last year, to Jeremy Stafford, the senior BT director responsible for all UK Government contracts, included a briefing note for Mr Stafford who was due to telephone Admiral Rees Ward, at the MoD to give him some details of the fraud and the firm's response.
The briefing note prepared for Mr Stafford's call to the Admiral concludes: "It is likely that we will need to make changes in the management team. We will do this in a controlled way which provides least risk to the programme. (The Admiral may want assurances regarding John Seale – I believe that it is in everyone's interest for John to move on in the next few months.)"
Mr Seale, who was business director for the Defence Fixed Telecommunications Service, did not respond to a request to comment. It is not known if he still holds the same position.
Another email from Mr Armstrong to Mr Stafford, and three other managers, sent on August 31, 2006 said disciplinary action against Mr McDonnell, the operations and service director for the MoD contract "has been initiated. As a separate issue he will be moved off the programme as soon as possible".
A further email from Mr Armstrong to the same managers on September 7 last year said Mr McDonnell "will be moved off the project as soon as possible".
Mr McDonnell is now defence business improvement director at BT. He declined to comment.
Managers' email trail as the alarm bells rang
Fears were raised within BT that the company may have committed corporate fraud over the huge phone scam operated by managers and staff at its call centres working for the Ministry of Defence.
An email from Denis Myers, a manager in BT's security operations to Andy Hodgson, vice president for security at BT Global Services, on May 14 this year highlights the risks and impact on BT and acknowledges that "potential criminal offences both corporate and individual" may have taken place.
The email adds: "The MoD Police fraud squad has conducted their own inquiry into this matter and upon completion forwarded to the Crown Prosecution Service for prosecution advice and/or direction. No such decision has yet been made."
Another internal communication, from Robin Armstrong, who ran BT's confidential Operation Trenale to manage the fallout from the fraud, to Jeremy Stafford, BT's director of contracts with the UK Government, refers to the potential involvement of the Serious Fraud Office (SFO).
An email sent on August 26 to Mr Stafford and three other senior managers, said: "There is an indication that the case might be referred to the SFO."
Another email sent on September 7 to the same managers said MoD Police were continuing their investigation and that "SFO are considering whether they will take on the case."
The SFO yesterday declined to comment.
Other emails obtained by the Yorkshire Post refer to an internal inquiry into the first investigation into the fraud carried out by BT investigators in 2004 which failed to find anything wrong.
It has previously been revealed that Sinclair Stockman, who was president of technology and operations at BT Global Services, believed the failure of the investigation, prompted by a tip-off to the MoD, had been a cover up. An email from Mr Armstrong to Mr Stafford on June 8 last year said: "Both the individuals involved with the first investigation have now been interviewed. The interviews raised a number of issues about the skills applied to the first investigation and the availability and quality of the information that had been made available to the investigation."
But it later adds: "We have carried out a re-examination of the first investigation and are confident that there is no cover up by the investigators although we are doing more work on the quality of the data provided to them."
Mr Stockman had described the mass falsification of calls "a disaster; not to mention a disgrace."
In an email to another manager he angrily criticised BT's failure to uncover the fraud in 2004 when the company carried out an internal investigation following an anonymous tip-off to the MoD.
He said: "I assume the managers who covered up; for I cannot see how else they could have reached the negative conclusion which they did; the issue in the original investigation have also been disciplined. There can be no tolerance for this sort of thing."
He was responding to a briefing from a manager called Andy Hodgson which said: "The MoD Police brought this matter to BT's attention and an internal investigation was carried out by local management in BT Global Services (BTGC) without the knowledge of BTGS Security. This enquiry revealed nothing and the MoD were told that the allegation was unfounded."
Email to a friend
Print this page- Three-inch blanket of snow heading our way today
- Alan Shearer in list of favourites for Leeds and England jobs: Latest odds
- Barnsley’s Keith Hill invokes Fawlty Towers over link with Leeds job
- McCormack feels United search can be narrowed down
- Redfearn throws down gauntlet as queue builds at Elland Road
- Rival chips in with £500,000 to restore the original Harry Ramsden’s
- Visit from Princess as Serbian culture celebrated
- SportsTalk: Leeds United’s manager search, Super League and Calcutta Cup
- Libraries aren’t like supermarkets, they are magical places where dreams begin
- Strategic review will lead to job losses at Yorkshire Bank
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Yorkshire
Sunday 12 February 2012
Today
Light rain
Temperature: 1 C to 6 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: North west
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 4 C to 8 C
Wind Speed: 16 mph
Wind direction: West
