Like a latter-day Eliot Ness, Josh Ellis enjoys nothing better than a good investigation — especially one where he can flex his skills in forensic accounting and track down bad guys by tracing their electronic footprints. The technologist will get a chance to do just that as the first-ever chief information officer for the U.K.’s Serious Fraud Office, an independent government department that prosecutes cases of complex deception.
In an economic downturn, the incidence of fraud tends to rise, especially in financial services, making his role as head of a team of tech-savvy investigators in the SFO’s digital forensic unit critical. The former regional director of forensic services for PricewaterhouseCoopers in Central and Eastern Europe is excited about returning to the U.K. to help tackle white-collar crime. “People can be remarkably astute and slick in how they perpetuate a crime,” Ellis notes. “But an astonishing number of them are technologically illiterate, so they don’t do a good job of covering their tracks.” You have been warned.
