| Success Stories |
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CRIME:
Tracking the Backpacker Murderer
The Mystery TNT Options Trader
Exposing Complex Fraud
INSURANCE:
US Insurance Giants get nasty
CORPORATE and GOVERNMENT:
Hardware chain makes profitable discoveries
Telecommunications Billing disaster averted
Cost Savings for Airline
Forensics Save Telecommunications Millions
Using Cells to Target Marketing
RETAIL:
Stock Loss Solution for Retailer
FINANCE:
Exposing Money Laundering
Headache cure for Asian Bank
CRIME
Tracking the Backpacker
Murderer
In the early 1990s seven young backpackers were murdered
in what was to become Australia’s most notorious serial
murder case. The police had developed a profile of the killer.
However, to track their suspect down, they faced an enormous
volume of data from numerous different sources. Investigators
therefore applied NetMapping technology to RTA vehicle records,
gym memberships, gun licensing and internal police records.
As a result, the list of suspects was progressively narrowed
from extensive list of individuals to a short list of 230, and then
a still shorter list of 32, which included the killer. Thanks
to NetMap, thousands of precious police hours were saved and
police were able to focus their investigations on a more manageable
list of potential suspects, leading to the eventual successful
conviction of the Backpacker Murderer.
"As a key member of the NSW Police Team involved
in the investigation of the "backpacker" murders
in Belangalo Forest, NSW, I believe it is fair to say that
NetMap proved to be of invaluable assistance, certainly in
the area of correlating massive amounts of disparate data
pertaining to the case – data that would otherwise have
taken significant amounts of resources to analyse. NetMap
was able to reduce what would have been many years of information
analysis into weeks and help lead the investigation team to
a faster close on the issue. I believe that NetMap succeeded
in providing the NSW Police with a unique view of information
related to the Backpacker Murderer case, information that
allowed investigations to be more focused and efficient in
terms of progressing the case to a faster, more accurate close.
Its capacity to quickly identify ubiquitous links enabled
our analysts to develop revolutionary strategies to combat
criminal enterprises." Angus A. Graham, Former Commander,
Criminal Research Bureau, NSW Police State Intelligence Group.
The Mystery TNT
Options Trader
The Australian Securities and Investment Commission has the
unenviable responsibility of regulating the many millions
of transactions that flow across the Australian Stock Exchange.
For some years now, ASIC has been a regular user of NetMap
technology to successfully detect irregularities. One of the
most high profile examples of this took place in August 1996
when investigators enlisted NetMapping technology to help
them track down a mystery TNT options trader who had become
a millionaire, just two weeks after purchasing options. The
criminal had cleverly hidden behind multiple layers of transactions,
false identities and third party bank accounts. However, with
the help of NetMap, ASIC was able to unravel this complex
trail, leading to the discovery and arrest of a Macquarie
Bank Director, (alias Mr Booth) who was successfully convicted
following his 1999 appeal. (see The Rogue Trader).
Exposing Complex Fraud
A government fraud agency had six fulltime staff working for two years to solve a complex mortgage fraud case (i.e. twelve man-years). NetMap Analytics was then given the task of seeing if it could unravel the same case more quickly. Our analyst took ten days to rework the data formats and structures and then entered it into our NetMap software. NetMap came up with the full solution in less than three hours and discovered additional aspects of the case that had not been previously known.
No other software could have achieved this result because of the size of the data, the complexity of the case and the lack of any initial leads or specification as to how to begin the analysis.
INSURANCE
US Insurance Giants get
nasty
Fighting insurance fraud is exceptionally difficult due to
the high volume and complexity of the data involved, as well
as the increasing sophistication of organised fraud rings.
NetMap helps Insurance Companies fight back. Twenty-seven
insurance companies in the USA now routinely employ NetMap
solutions. This includes over half of the fifteen largest
insurance companies with a total direct written premium of
$US49 billion. Employing NetMap’s state-of-the-art techniques
allows US investigators to quickly spot irregular patterns
of activity within millions of items of data from policies,
claims, payments and medical billing details. These companies
are now enjoying a better than nine to one return on their
investment. Now Australian insurance companies have the opportunity
to secure this same powerful competitive tool.
CORPORATE AND GOVERNMENT
Hardware chain makes
profitable discoveries
This was an especially interesting project that NetMap undertook
for an Australian hardware retail chain. NetMap analysed all
their point of sale data and matched it together with customer
demographics. By tracking all the patterns, groupings and
clusters of buyer behaviour, NetMap was able to identify a
whole range of market segments. Of course, there were obvious
groupings, like people who buy paint will often buy paintbrushes
etc. However, NetMap's analysis also revealed a number of
customer groups that had previously not been considered. One
in particular was a potentially very profitable group of home
renovators with highly distinctive buying patterns. The hardware
chain was then able to develop a whole package of services/training
products/special offers to target this market segment. The
chances of finding this group, or even knowing to look for
them, would have been virtually zero with conventional techniques.
Telecommunications
billing disasters averted
NetMap has proven itself time and again in the auditing of
complex billing systems. Two recent examples both involved
telecommunications companies. In one case NetMap discovered
that a recently installed piece of equipment worth $750,000
was producing erroneous records for every single local call.
NetMap's analysis identified the problem before it became
a major issue that could have resulted in extensive customer
dissatisfaction and loss of revenue. In another project for
a different telecommunications company, NetMap found that
customers were being charged entirely different long distance
(STD) rates. NetMap was again able to pinpoint the gremlin
in the system and avert a costly, embarrassing problem.
Cost Savings for Airline
Qantas Airways had been experiencing cost overruns on ‘special meals’. It was believed that travel agents were ordering the relatively expensive ‘special meals’ unnecessarily as a favour to clients. Qantas engaged a team of consultants from North America who spent nine weeks analysing the problem, unsuccessfully. NetMap Analytics was then engaged. The data preparation phase took three days. Then, within two hours, NetMap revealed that the problem had little to do with particular agents. Instead, on flights in and around SE Asia at a certain time of the year that coincided with Ramadan, passengers were ordering ‘special meals’ in order to obtain white meat that was not on the normal menu. By including white meat on normal menus for those flights for those times of the year, the company immediately saved $250,000 per year.
The apparently obvious answers (in this case, agents making a welter of ‘special meals’) are not always correct. Rather, the answers are often buried in the data and NetMap is unique in the way that it enables the data “to speak”.
Forensics Save Telecommunications Millions
Telstra’s Forensic and Special Investigations Group handles customer complaints escalated to a ‘serious’ level. These often involve large sums and pending litigation against the corporation for alleged failure of services and lost business. Investigation of the relevant circumstances can be both complex and voluminous, since analysis tasks often involve low-level call records and billing data drawn from disparate warehouses and other sources. Telstra introduced NetMap to handle this problem.
Telstra conducted formal studies to compare the use of NetMap with previous methods. Telstra’s report states “time savings of between 50 and 500 to 1” were achieved and, furthermore, “relevant information was discovered that was not possible to be discovered by any other means”.
Debt previously classified as “unrecoverable” is now being recovered at the rate of $6,000,000 pa. ROI is in excess of 20 times the annual outlay.
Using Cells to Target Marketing
Regular segmentation methods can be too aggregated and lacking in specificity, whereas ‘one on one’ marketing tends to be too specific and not practical for most marketers. NetMap Cell Marketing is in between. Cells of customers and/or prospects who have most of their relationships with each other are identified by the NetMap software. Within each cell, ‘hubs’ can be found, people with many relationships in a position to influence others.
A telco’s marketing department wanted NetMap to discover customer cells buried in its own data of call records so that it could better target its offers. Three months of call data yielded 70 cells of sufficient size and composition to warrant further analysis. Each was then analysed to determine who the ‘hubs’ were, i.e. those few parties with most of the relationships within the call, and thereby best positioned to influence the acceptance of marketing offers to those others in the cell.
RETAIL
Stock Loss Solution for Retailer
Fraud and the unaccountable shrinkage of stock can represent the loss of many millions of dollars to large retail operators.
When NetMap Analytics began working with a premier retailer, data was analysed from two stores, a store where fraud had been discovered by traditional "exception-based" detection methods and people prosecuted, and a separate store where the extent of losses were unknown. NetMap found the same fraudulent activity in the first store that led to the prosecutions, as well as further fraudulent activity that had been missed by the exception based detection methods. Significant fraudulent activity was also detected in the second store.
Since then, point of sale data from the chain of stores has been regularly analysed resulting in a reduction of shrinkage or stock loss by approximately 50%. The company's loss prevention experts confirm there is no other way that the extent of their stock loss fraud could have been uncovered and done so quickly. The company has since saved many millions of dollars through reduced shrinkage.
FINANCE
Exposing Money Laundering
Following Basel II and other influences in the banking and finance community, compliance to anti-money laundering (AML) standards has become increasingly important. Traditional statistical tools are based on "exception" reporting and the definition of rules that govern those exceptions. Concealment and avoiding detection by known rules are the key weapons of would-be perpetrators and so the unique "discovery" capabilities of NetMap SuperAudit which analyses the data "bottom up" are critical.
In a financial organisation that is a client of NetMap, a rules based system daily processes large volumes of data to flag certain types of transactions. These are passed to NetMap where the data is further "enriched" with additional information about the parties involved and account information. The analysts are then able to visualise and detect emergent patterns in the data that are virtually impossible to find any other way. Deemed highly successful, the system provides necessary levels of assurance. It has also led to numerous prosecutions.
This organisation is now further progressing its usage of NetMap towards shorter time intervals between data updates and near real time viewing.
Headache cure for Asian Bank
A bank in the SE Asian region was experiencing a serious problem with customer reporting. There were significant discrepancies in the monthly portfolio reports issued to investment customers. As a result, customers were losing confidence in the bank’s ability to manage their portfolios. The bank blamed its data supplier, so the supplier sent in consultants to examine the bank’s database. At the same time, the bank itself called upon NetMap to do the same job. The consultants spent two weeks sifting through the database using common reporting and query tools to find several thousand errors. NetMap did exactly the same process in just one day, with just one person and not only found all the same errors but an additional 500 (approximately) that had been missed using the manual process.
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