Fraud detection involves monitoring user behaviour to predict, detect and prevent fraud, as well as avoiding intrusion and account manipulation. Fraud detection processes results in recovering billions of Euros worldwide each year.

The Criminal Records Unit of the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) certifies the authenticity of documents and provides citizens with non-convictions documents. In this work, the Unit handles signatures, stamps, seals and other instruments of authenticity.

Recently, the Unit has expressed a need to better identify possible counterfeits and other false and fraudulent alterations of documents, seals and stamps. To that end, and knowing that the Forensic Science Laboratory of the Palestinian Civil Police (PCP) has the specific expertise needed, the Ministry of Justice and the Head of the PCP agreed, on the initiative of EUPOL COPPS, to engage two experts from the Laboratory in Ramallah to deliver such training.

Accordingly a two-day training on fraud detection for members of the Criminal Records Unit was organised by the Mission on 14 and 15 January 2019 in Ramallah. During the training session, a comprehensive review of the different techniques to detect frauds was presented. The two trainers from PCP also gave practical examples of fraudulent seals, stamps, signatures and banknotes. The training on fraud detection was highly appreciated by the 16 participants from the MoJ Criminal Records Unit, and proved to be very useful in their future daily work. The head of the Criminal Records Unit concluded by stating that the two days of activities were “the best training ever”.