Former Australian Taxation Office (ATO) deputy commissioner John Ford has joined a new BioCatch public-private advisory board that aims to help governments identify and prevent fraud involving tax, welfare and pension payments.
The advisory board’s stated approach is to work with governments and law enforcement to enable banks using BioCatch to alert agencies when an account appears high risk, before government payments are deposited.
The board’s founding members include Ford, former IRS Criminal Investigation chief Guy Ficco and former Israel Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority director-general Dr Shlomit Wagman, according to BioCatch.
In Australia, the proposal lands amid persistent concerns about the scale of fraud affecting government payments and the gap between reported losses and estimated totals. Commonwealth entities quantified $110.7 million in external fraud losses in 2024–25, while external fraud allegations rose 27% to 348,072, according to figures cited in the release. The Commonwealth Fraud Prevention Centre has said the true figure is likely higher, and the OECD has cited an estimate of $5 billion to $25 billion a year.
The release also points to the ATO’s response to GST refund fraud, which it says cost at least $2 billion, with more than 57,000 detected perpetrators. Banks began sending the ATO more alerts about suspicious refunds from December 2021, it said.
BioCatch said it already operates an account intelligence network among Australian banks. Its BioCatch Trust network launched in 2024 with ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, NAB, Suncorp and Westpac, and Macquarie has since joined, according to the release.
“Fraud against tax and welfare systems diverts resources from those who need them most and undermines confidence in government programmes,” Ford said.
BioCatch said the advisory board would seek to establish partnerships enabling member banks to collaborate to warn government agencies about high-risk payments before tax, unemployment, pension and other payments are made to people who may not be legally entitled to them.
The announcement comes as Australia prepares for incoming reforms, including New Scams Prevention Framework obligations for banks starting on 31 March 2027. The release also noted that Parliament’s AI committee heard on 30 October that the ATO has begun using AI to track fraud.
