According to John Gavan, chief executive of Neural Technologies, £40 billion a year is lost worldwide through telecoms fraud. Neural Technologies has developed software, called Minotaur, that uses pattern-recognition technology to help clients like Orange, Sprint PCS and Visa to detect fraud. The company says it is so confident its technology is fool-proof that it makes a risk-free proposal to customers – it offers to bill them for a percentage of the savings that the software generates. Neural Technologies’ sales have grown 70% a year from £1.2m in 2000 to £3.5m in 2002.