Ref. 74481-206 Richard BakerMAJOR fraud is on the increase in Swindon and south west.

Business services firm KPMG monitors fraud each year and found that in the south west and Wales there were 23 cases worth £16.1m, compared to 19 cases worth £14.3m the year before.

The monitor only takes into account crimes in which more than £100,000 has been embezzled.

Among the cases heard were those of Richard Baker, the Swindon tax inspector who cheated the Inland Revenue by creating 44 false taxpayer identities and paid £293,334 to himself in rebates.

Last month Baker, of St Andrew's Ridge, was given three and a half years in prison by a judge at Swindon Crown Court.

A 10-year investigation into Robinson's, a solicitors' firm with practices in Swindon, Cheltenham, Gloucester and Bristol, discovered a legal aid fraud worth £5 million.

The firm's founder, Timothy Robinson, had served a seven-year jail sentence, although the details could not be released until last autumn because other trials, including those involving Swindon employees, had to finish.

Other cases involved the treasurer of a Wiltshire religious society who stole £170,000 from the group's funds, and a Wiltshire farm secretary who siphoned £138,000 from her employer.

Smaller cases, such as those involving Teresa Warren, 43, of Grange Drive, Stratton, an employee of Britannia Building Society, in Bridge Street,who falsified passbooks and transferred money between accounts to net herself £72,000, were not included but experts believe those are on the rise too.

Paul Tombleson, the director of KPMG Forensic in the south west, said: "The rise in both the value and number of cases is bad news for south west businesses.

"While our survey covers fraud cases over £100,000 we often find that losing even relatively small amounts of money can disrupt cash flow and bring small businesses to their knees.

"Many of the frauds suffered by businesses could have been avoided."

The advice given to business includes checking internal controls and using software programmes that can sift through data to flag potential false customers, invoices, expenses or employees, as well as duplicate payments."

Across the country the number of fraud cases rose by 14 per cent in 2004 compared to the previous year, and in the past five years the number of large-scale fraud cases being tried in courts has increased fivefold.