| Date: | Tuesday 24th March 2026 |
|---|---|
| Time: | 09:00 |
| Venue: | Innovations Zone, Engine Shed |
| Speakers: | Amanda Alldridge, Dr Amber Phillips, Andrew Bird KC, Inés Hamilton Sánchez, Jane Walters, John Allcock, Dr Penny Dunbabin, Peter Highway, Rachel Harrison |
| Cost: | This event is free for members. If you are not currently an active member, the cost of each ticket will be £135 |
Andrew Bird K.C. to speak at the South West Fraud Forum Annual Conference, 24 March 2026
The South West Fraud Forum invites its members (existing and new) to the Annual Conference on 24 March 2026.
This year's conference promises an insightful look into Asset Recovery and the UK’s evolving approach to recovering the proceeds of crime. Whether you are an experienced practitioner or new to the sector, the SWFF was set up with the aim of increasing the resilience of regional organisations to the threats posed by fraud, and this event is tailored to the pursuance of that aim.
The Annual Conference
The 2026 Annual conference is a key opportunity for fraud prevention practitioners, and anyone responsible for fraud risk, to develop essential and practical knowledge and to meet likeminded industry professionals.
The SWFF is proud to bring the highest calibre of speakers from the areas of fraud prevention, investigation, enforcement and industry – and the 2026 Annual Conference will continue in this tradition!
Speakers:
Dr Amber Phillips is a criminologist specialising in organised and economic crime. She has a particular interest in asset recovery, inspired by her experiences with anti-mafia organisations in Calabria, Italy, which inspired her interest in criminology in the first place. Amber's most recent work has focused on developing alternative success measures for asset recovery in England and Wales, and she was recently awarded £90,000 by the National Economic Crime Centre and UK Home Office for a research project exploring the deterrent impact of proceeds of crime legislation. Her work has been published in international journals including Trends in Organised Crime, and she is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Economic Criminology. She is an expert reviewer for funding bodies including the European Commission and the Independent Social Research Foundation.
Senior Member of Home Office ARIS
The Home Office Asset Recovery Incentivisation Scheme (ARIS) is a UK government program launched in 2006 that aims to incentivise law enforcement agencies to recover criminal assets. ARIS redistributes a portion of recovered criminal assets to agencies involved in the asset recovery process, providing operational partners with incentives to pursue asset recovery as part of crime reduction efforts.
The scheme allocates net receipts from asset recovery between the Home Office and operational partners based on their contributions to delivering receipts into ARIS. The proceeds from asset recovery can be reinvested in tackling crime or returned to victims following criminal conviction.
Since Jane joined Companies House in 1989, Jane has developed a depth of knowledge and expertise spanning a number of operational departments within Companies House. Jane has a breadth of experience dealing with front facing issues and complexities faced by Companies House. Jane has been pivotal in the implementation of the Companies House Intelligence Department taking a lead role on the establishment and development of the intelligence department. Most recently Jane has been at the forefront of the ongoing implementation of the newly formed Specialist Intelligence Unit, building a strong network of partnerships to tackle economic crime.
Peter Highway joined Avon and Somerset Police in 1991 and has been a Senior Investigating Officer in various roles including Counter Corruption, Domestic Abuse, Child Protection, and Bristol CID. For the last eight years he has worked at the Regional Organised Crime Unit leading a team of Financial Investigators and Economic Crime detectives and is accredited to PIP3 in Serious and Organised Crime Investigation. The team primarily conduct Fraud and Proceeds of Crime investigations but also prosecute predicate offences such as human trafficking and drugs supply. Peter was the SIO for one of the largest ever police fraud prosecutions, which concluded in Southwark Crown Court in 2025 after an 8-year investigation. 14 defendants were convicted of a fraud involving 4700 victims and £27 million of losses.
Amanda Alldridge
Amanda Alldridge has worked in law enforcement as police staff for 25 years, starting out as a Criminal Intelligence Analyst before moving into Equalities policy research and community engagement. She then went on to be a Serious and Organised Crime Investigating Officer before becoming a Financial Investigator a role in which she describes herself as being a 'square peg in a square hole!'
Amanda has been a Financial Investigator for over 10 years working at both a Force and Regional Level. Amanda, while maintaining her own accreditation as a Financial Investigator, currently manages the Asset Confiscation Enforcement Team ("ACE") which sits within the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit, a role which she is extremely passionate about.
John joined NatWest Group in 2007 and has built extensive experience across corporate operations, business relationship management, and financial crime prevention. After supporting a broad portfolio of business clients as a Commercial Assistant Relationship Manager, he moved into the Fraud Prevention team in 2021. John now advises organisations on emerging fraud risks and plays an active role in delivering fraud and scam education to businesses across the UK, equipping teams with the insight needed to stay ahead of evolving threats.
Dr Penny Dunbabin
Dr Penny Dunbabin is the Senior Policy Lead at the Home Office. She joined the Home Office in 2023 and was responsible for writing the guidance for the offence of failure to prevent fraud. This included an informal consultation with over 50 Government departments, regulators and arm’s length bodies and over 100 industry representatives, including 38 trade bodies and a number of professional bodies who circulated to their members. Penny is now working on developing policy to protect businesses against fraud.
and
Our Panel on (Crypto) Asset Recovery with
Andrew Bird KC read law at Trinity Hall, Cambridge and was called to the Bar (Inner Temple) in 1987. He has been a tenant at 5 St Andrew’s Hill (formerly 1 Harcourt Buildings) since 1989. He is a specialist in white‑collar crime, civil and criminal asset forfeiture, and civil and public law proceedings which overlap with those jurisdictions. He has a long-standing expertise (acting for both sides) in judicial review challenges to search warrants, including the Faisaltex, NUFC and CumEx Litigation.
Since taking Silk in 2021, he has appeared for the defence in sanctions, bribery, border fraud, in addition to continuing his private prosecution practice and acting for both sides in Restraint, Confiscation, Civil Recovery and Summary Proceedings. Andrew is ranked in Chambers and Partners in the fields of POCA and Asset Forfeiture (Band 1 Silk), Financial Crime, and Private Prosecutions – Financial Crime.
He is ranked in the Legal 500 in the field of POCA and Asset Forfeiture, and also recognised in the Lexology Index at the UK Bar in the fields of Civil Fraud, Criminal Fraud and Asset Recovery. He is a contributing editor to Montgomery & Ormerod on Fraud and Smith & Owen on Asset Recovery (OUP).
Rachel Harrison is a Senior Associate & Solicitor Advocate at CMS UK, where she specialises in banking, finance, and digital assets disputes. She has a track-record of guiding clients through reputationally-sensitive and high-profile disputes, often involving frauds. Rachel has significant in-house experience, having spent a year on secondment to a leading cryptoexchange, managing its international (excluding US) litigation docket. She is ranked by Chambers & Partners as an ‘associate to watch’ for Crypto Asset Disputes (UK) and listed by Legal500 as a ‘key lawyer’ for Banking Litigation (London).
Inés Hamilton Sánchez is a Manager in the Forensics Investigations and Intelligence team in London.Inés serves as the operational lead for Kroll’s crypto investigations team in London, and has worked on cases including combined claims of over USD 1 billion, some backed by litigation funding, that are currently being heard in global courts.
With a global remit to manage the technical components of Kroll’s cryptocurrency and blockchain investigations, Inés specializes in retrieving and analyzing online information from sources such as blockchains, internet infrastructure, social media and the deep web. Inés has worked on investigations for victims of sophisticated hacks, cryptocurrency thefts carried out through the victim’s IT provider, and has supported on several source of wealth reviews into significantly crypto-wealthy individuals on behalf of retail banks and investors.
For more information and for tickets, please click here.
