Stonetrough Data Mining LLP

Contact details

Tel: 07976 767732

Email:

Address:
Stone Trough Cottage
Back Street
Castleton
Hope Valley
S33 8WE

Data mining and Investigation Services

Stonetrough Data Mining provides data mining and investigation services.

Tim Alderson is a qualified Chartered Accountant and has delivered Data Mining and Investigations services for the last nine years. He has been involved in some of the recent large litigation cases in the financial services sector. He has supported Forensic, Corporate Recovery and Investigation Services teams on IT and data mining related matters, particularly on fraud cases, working on assignments with the SFO, FSA, and DTI.

Data Mining can be described as the application of IT technical tools and skills where there is a need to investigate a specific claim, allegation, dispute or concern over integrity, or completeness, of the data within the computer applications. Tim through experience has found the most effective tool for this task to be IDEA.

IDEA is a commercially available software package that was originally written by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants. For further details go to www.auditware.co.uk.

The value delivered

It is the combination of Tim's experience and knowledge of investigation techniques, financial reporting, computerised accounting applications, accounting systems data structures, and the power of the IDEA software application, which supports:

the recovery of assets
identifying and evaluating exposure to fraud
the reduction in the value of claims made against clients
challenging the validity of claims

Acquiring the data

The first stage of a data mining assignment involves the identification and acquisition of relevant data. This data is analysed to gain an understanding of the financial applications and data structures, using IDEA.

Analysis of the data

The analysis stage of the investigation typically involves:

reviewing data integrity
profiling data
reviewing the completeness of data
extraction of data populations
producing and evaluating statistical samples
reviewing and re-performing the identification and extraction of data populations
identification, investigation, and evaluation of fraudulent transactions and activity
the reconstruction of balance sheets based on transaction history
testing of data for compliance with business rules
the verification of costs looking for duplicate invoices and payments.

Credentials

Comparison of data between two complex asset management systems to prove the accuracy and integrity of the applications in a contract dispute for the appointed expert [claim for £50m]
Instructed by directors to investigate and evaluate a fraud on a major customer over 7 years. [£3m claim]
Enabling the recovery of VAT by a liquidator by unravelling the VAT treatment of 24m financial transactions [ £1.5m recovered]
Defending an international breach of warranty claim for £300m arising out of a fraud on the sale of a business through the recreation of balance sheets for a number of years from the underlying financial transactions for the appointed expert
Instructed by the compliance officer of a life insurer to review the integrity and completeness of the extraction of policy data from the corporate mainframe
Reviewed contract terms and transactions to identify and recover costs relating to duplicate invoices and payments and for payments made outside of the agreed contract terms for the head of Internal Audit. [Recovered £3m]
Instructed by the Association of British Insurers to investigate fraudulent insurance claims [£1m recovered]
Instructed by liquidator to review the basis of a claim by the analysis of the completeness and integrity of the underlying transactions to support their claim [£20m recovered]

Tim Alderson FCA

Registered office: Stone Trough Cottage, Back Street, Castleton, HopeValley, Derbyshire, S33 8WE
Registered in England & Wales, Registration No: OC342755