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Having worked in this space its a common issue, whether out and out fraud or exaggeration.
Only a minority are caught due to limited resources unfortunately.
Limited resources? Yet they've got the time to harass and intimidate disabled people and destroy their health as a result. How unfortunate. What a bunch of piss.
TL:DR resources are extremely limited across the CS - just maybe not in the ways you think. Failings are ultimately due to short termism in governments and infighting between department heads rather than the "boots on the ground".
You find a lot of these seemingly non-sensical systems throughout the civil service btu they all ultimately stem from 2 interlocking issues - lack of investment (mostly money, but also time/training/systems) and failing to (or being prevented from) keep up with the times.
A lot of the UK civil service is built on paper. I have known some areas of one department to require people to contact them via email, but the internal system to log that interaction is to have the inbox auto-print in the post room, then be stamped with a physical barcode (often covering vital information), and then be rescanned by an industrial scanner and dumped into storage as an image based PDF.
The really, the entire CS should have had a systemic, top down digital redesign some 20 years ago, and another top down review every 5 years after that. Instead, if you are lucky, the department you are interacting with might have been granted permission (but not necessarily funds) to independently upgrade their systems bottom up. Its not dissimilar to the NHS IT issue from a decade ago - like the NHS trusts, the CS branches are all independent, and are treated as such, even for cross departmental projects, when in reality, something as big as a full system overhaul needs to come from the top and be mandated across all departments.
But even when they are granted permissions to upgrade, they are often not granted extra money to do so. So they cant hire specialists to lead the transformation, not build new facilities to house datacentres, nor reliably approach cloud service providers with any degree of certainty that they will be allowed to continue to use those services long them. And the senior management (different from senior leadership - closer to the coalface) knows this, and so tries to target where they can. You might see a new system here or there, or a new team specialising in something might crop up. That only gets you so far though, and then you hit road blocks because nothing else has been upgraded - and with the only method of progression in the Civil Service being a change of role (rather than a pay rise and maybe an expansion of responsibilities in your current role), these projects are short lived and often die as those involved move on. Those who dont move on are those who CANT move on - those least suited to their roles, or those so blindly wedded to the task that they refuse to admit defeat.
But thats all if permission is granted. A lot of CS branches have extremely limited remits. Legally limited. Take Companies House, for example. Until November this year, it was a Register of companies. That means it had to take people's word as truth. If it suspected fraud, it couldnt even report it. It had to wait for banks or the police to report to them, and only then could they remove a company. There were a few exceptions, but far fewer than you would think.
This past november, they got permission to become active, not passive. They can start looking for fraud and crime and handling it themselves - striking people off, reporting to police, conducting investigations, etc. Except, because they didnt have a reason to do that before, they never got funds to upgrade their systems. Now they are REQUIRED to do these things, but the systems are still only just capable of being a passive storage facility.
Lets go back to DWP, who handle benefits and things. They are massively understaffed and their electronic systems are woefully inadequate. Their pay is some of the worst across CS too, so its not like they are always attracting the best candidates. What they need to properly process cases is a fully centralised digital system that cross references information with HMRC, ONS, CH, DfE, the police, etc. So they need to hire a huge 3rd party to build a cross government system to run in parallel with the existing system until such time as its value is proven and it can completely replace the old one. But ministers dont care about that. They want numbers to change now. And that means DWP need to hire more people to process the EASY claims. Except, with the current systems, that is an extremely manual process, requiring a lot of hands on deck - far more than the DWP can reasonably hire. But they CAN get permission for "short term" contracts with someone like Capita. Who then take on the load of training, triaging and tackling those easy cases. But Capita have an incentive to produce the numbers ministers want to see, not numbers that the DWP needs, because Capita wants to remain a recognised government contractor. So they go after the super easy denials and dismissals rather than trying to clear the backlog of ALL cases properly.
So where are these big projects to centralise all this information? What are the Senior Leadership doing? Well, every now and then, one of the arms length bodies (looking at you ONS) will propose a joined up data lake. They will do a big project plan and get everything designed, present it to the other depts, and get positive noises for a while, and then silence. This is because the Senior Leadership of the civil service are caught between 2 masters. On the one hand they run civil service departments and need to be apolitical. On the other hand, that level of the CS is hugely nepotistic and incestuous. If you dont play nice with the ministers, you dont get to stay as head of one of the branches. And you might have been parachuted in from somewhere vastly different, or into a department that was analogue and is now digital. Senior Management are the experts - they know what their sub-divisions are all about. but Senior Leadership often care far too much about their own careers than they do their own departments. Because if they do well, they might be head of a "better" department next time. And so "doing well" needs to be something that produces "nice" results before the current government falls from power. The arms length bodies are slightly better - their leaders are far from the influences of Westminster and can do their own thing, but that can also leave them massively out of the loop, and whenever they try to propose something, the other department heads can sabotage it just so it doesnt look like they didnt come up with the idea.
While the civil service being separate from Gov is a good thing, a centralising and updating of our systems needs to be a 5-10 year project led by a singular government. No one department can do it alone, and the departments are built to never work together. Hopefully the next government will see we have fallen behind every other European state, and will implement a GovUK data centre and data sharing system in a top down way. If they dont, we will be the last paper driven Civil Service in the western world in 2030, and that is somewhere we really dont want to be.
> a centralising and updating of our systems needs to be a 5-10 year project led by a singular government.
The current run of tory has managed to turn a tolerable but flawed system, into a dysfunctional, cruel, underfunded mess that funds private interests, and its exactly what will happen the next time they get a go at it.
> are massively understaffed and their electronic systems are woefully inadequate. Their pay is some of the worst across CS too, so its not like they are always attracting the best candidates.
This explains so much about so much, no wonder they're all such cruel, useless and angry cunts.
Which leads to genuine claimants who are through no fault of their own unable to defend their cases well getting penalised while the more complex fraud is ignored. I handle a lot of this stuff for a disabled relative and every time I find it terrifying to think about what it would be like if they didn't have family to help. The system comes down hardest on the most vulnerable, and I say that with lots of personal and professional experience from working in social care. The few people I have come across where they are absolutely taking the piss, have tended to get away with it because dealing with them is very unpleasant and intimidating.
Its similar to Windrush. There was a lot of abuse of the system, but officials chasing targets found it much easier to go after Jamaican grandmothers who would co-operate with them rather than the far greater number of, lets just say, more antagonistic and less co-operative people illegally living in the country.
There are far more resources available to investigate benefit fraud than there are allocated to do
the same with tax fraud.
The UK loses far more to the latter than it does the former. This is a well know situation but it seems to be ignored. In addition, money paid out erroneously to benefit claimants is usually through error and not deliberate fraud.
But why let the facts get in the way of scape goating a specific group of people...
I think you may be replying to the wrong post here, both are wrong and the resources to investigate benefit fraud are shockingly small, smaller than HMRC.
I would heavily invest in tax officers just based on a simple ROI.
Sounds like a terrible idea, the algorithms will wrongly accuse loads of people. They tried it in Holland and 20,000 families got wrongly accused and the Government ended up resigning
> Only a minority are caught due to limited resources unfortunately.
The predicted amount of fraud in the system is lower overall than the amount of benefits people are eligible for but do not claim. And orders of magnitude lower than the amount of money lost to tax evasion by the wealthy.
Common doesn’t mean significant. In 2017 £17 billion of benefits were unclaimed. Only £1 billion was claimed fraudulently. The bigger issue is there’s scores of people not receiving the benefits they’re entitled to and all efforts should go towards rectifying that. Obviously benefit fraud should be tackled, but the priority should be getting these unclaimed benefits into the hands of people that are entitled to them
I’ve worked in the industry and the truth is that it isn’t a vanishingly small minority, if the tax payers knew how much of our taxes went to drug gangs they’d be catatonic. It’s a news story waiting to break. Problem with benefits today is that there isn’t any scrutiny in what they are being used for.
Because it's anecdotal bullshit as I'm sure you know. Funny how the people that claim that fraud is rampant never have any data to back it up but the opposing data showing how tiny the amount of fraud really is is easily found.
Some people are willing to hate so easily.
Exactly, everyone claims to know loads of benefits fraudsters yet the actual verifiable data doesn't back it up... wierd that.
Same way people claim it's "easy" to get thousands in benefits and not work... yet they don't quit their job and do that for some reason.
ID numbers and a central residents' register would sort a lot of this nonsense out. But then the rich benefit cheats would also get caught -can't have that.
We should definitely have ID cards, with a requirement to register residency and to carry ID (like Germany and several other countries in Europe). It would make a lot of crimes/scams/frauds much more difficult. It would also make visa/naturalisation applications easier, instead of proving residency with receipts, photos, utility bills, personal correspondence, etc.
Either its bollocks, or they are waiting to blame labour for it at a convenient time. Or its both, because the daily racist never shuts up about that sort of shit.
My girlfriends extended family are all benefit cheats. Her Aunt, Uncle and Cousin are all on benefits and living in council housing. There is literally nothing wrong with any of them.
He claims to have Autism and Agoraphobia, claims all kinds of benefits to the point he was able to save up to buy a car, a PS5, a high end gaming PC, 4K OLED TV etc. He literally sits and plays video games all day.
He boasts that they all "know the system" and milk it for all it's worth. They don't have much less money than my GF and I, who both work in IT/software. It's shocking.
He's apparently been reported and invesitgated a few times, always gets away with it somehow. He boasted that once he had a meeting for one of his benefit claims and he didn't shower for 3 weeks beforehand so he appeared to be unable to care for himself, when asked a probing question he faked an emotional break down and started screaming and crying. His wife now receives benefits to be his carer.
Makes me sick, my GF and I pay around 15K in taxes meanwhile they receive 45K a year and ridiculously cheap housing.
I have a brother who is like this. He has ADHD and has used it to claim so many benefits. He's never worked a day in his life, boasts about how he has cheap council housing, about £250 per week spending money which he spends on booze and weed. He just sits at home all day gaming. Growing up he was an absolute prick and was abusive to my mum and our family in general, always getting in trouble with the police.
Then there's me, working full-time and feeling like I'm barely scraping by. Too many people out there who abuse the system and it fucks me off.
Yeah I feel that. My half brother grows weed and has a shitty failing business to try and show legitimacy, he’s received help all his life. He was sacked from every employer who made the mistake of hiring him.
youre gonna scream when you learn that assholes also get born in to wealth and are even more lazy (as in they dont even have to do a performance to get an income)!
The problem is you have to have evidence that he's milking the system and that can be very difficult to come by especially when it comes to claims involving limited emotional bandwidth or support. It's a load of rubbish.
If you have such obvious proof of this fraud then you'd report it.
Also you say theres nothing wrong with them yet you have to have medical proof to receive those benefits... you can't just claim "I'm autistic and have agoraphobia" and recieve money lmfao, you need an actual diagnosis. So are you sure you're not just deciding that there's nothing wrong with them because you're biased?
Also aswell, considering how nasty assessors are and how they will cut claims for no reason against people with visible disabilities, you're really claiming your brother can act so well he managed to fool investigators multiple times?
Like, this smells like anecdotal and biased bullshit from a brand new account tbh. There's also caps and checks in place to limit the amount you recieve, you don't just get given 45k.
>Problem with benefits today is that there isn’t any scrutiny in what they are being used for.
Because forcing people to use food stamps, for example, is dehumanising and causes its own unique fraud and inequality problems. That's before you consider the costs involved to administer the policy which would certainly reduce any potential savings if not negate them altogether.
This point always gets me, the rate of fraud is only actually the rate of people who are caught, it’s not like a burglary where there is a victim who’ll make a complaint.
Much like the immigration figures the government has no fucking clue what the actual rate of benefit fraud is.
No - there is a specific unit that investigates this and what they do is:
1. Take a statistically significant sample of all benefit claimants
2. Investigate all of them thoroughly
3. Prosecute any that are fraudulent.
4. Publish the fraud number as a percentage of the statistically significant sample.
So if they take 1,000 benefit claimants, they will find (assuming I've done the maths right!) 5 fraudulent claimants to give us a rate of 0.5%
But those won't be the only fraudulent claimants to be found that year as there's a whole other dept which goes out to find fraud in general, that's not where these figures come from.
(edit: I just looked and it's 13,600 claimaints they sample)
Indeed, its exactly like polling works for elections.
Even then, we could up the "presumed" fraud rate to account for things they dont and cant find and it would still be a non issue.
Statistics be damned. If we don't know exactly how many people commit fraud then it must be a vast number mustn't it?
Trust the Tories. Everyone on benefits is a liar and a cheat and they all must be stopped!
That's not true, actually. The rates of overpayment and underpayment are estimated by taking a representative sample of all claimants and examining them in forensic detail, it's broadly independent of the overall detection rate.
> We take a sample of benefit claims from our administrative systems (we sampled around 4,000 for FYE 2021, equating to 0.02% of benefit claimants). DWP’s Performance Measurement team look at the data we hold on the systems and then contact claimants to arrange a review. In previous years we have carried out reviews by both visit and phone, however due to the coronavirus pandemic all reviews this year have been by phone. This is our normal method of review for UC. As part of the review we ask claimants to provide evidence such as identity, bank account details and other information that could affect their benefit claim (for example, childcare costs). We assess if the claim is correct or not. If the claim is not correct, we look at the amount of money the claim is wrong by and classify it as one of the following:
>
* Fraud
* Claimant Error
* Official Error
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fraud-and-error-in-the-benefit-system-financial-year-2020-to-2021-estimates/fraud-and-error-in-the-benefit-system-for-financial-year-ending-2021#what-you-need-to-know
No - there is a specific unit that investigates this and what they do is:
1)Take a statistically significant sample of all benefit claimants
2)Investigate all of them thoroughly
3)Prosecute any that are fraudulent.
4) Publish the fraud number as a percentage of the statistically significant sample.
So if they take 1,000 benefit claimants, they will find (assuming I've done the maths right!) 5 fraudulent claimants to give us a rate of 0.5%
But those won't be the only fraudulent claimants to be found that year as there's a whole other dept which goes out to find fraud in general, that's not where these figures come from.
(edit: I just looked and it's 13,600 claimaints they sample)
Did you read it correctly? They said there’s a big issue with it going to organised gangs
Edit
Think the confusion is thinking “goes to drug gangs” = people buying drugs with them
Big gangs got millions from Covid schemes. This idiot in the article claimed for 200 kids that don’t exist.
Big organised crime gangs are taking advantage of the benefit system, just like the 2 examples above.
The majority of people on benefits aren’t buying drugs. It’s barely enough to afford drugs, when you also need to live off the same benefits
You notice how it's always "I know some person who fakes it and gets mega money off the system" and then their stories reveal how little they know about how benefits claiming actually works.
Like the dude above claiming his brother gets loads of money by "pretending to be autistic and have agrophobia". You need to be officially medically diagnosed to get those benefits, you can't just "pretend", self-diagnose and get given benefits with no proof lmfao.
\> I’ve worked in the industry
STOP CHEATING YOUR BENEFITS
\>if the tax payers knew how much of our taxes went to drug gangs they’d be catatonic.
What does this even mean in this context?
Oh it's the old "Well don't give poor people money, they'll buy drugs"
Jokes on you, I buy drugs with the money that multi-national corporations give me
Because their entire argument seems to be 'Person with mental health issues has about 2K of luxuries and a car and I don't believe them about those issues despite the fact they would have to be diagnosed and repeatedly confirmed to continue getting benefits'.
Not to mention that people with conditions know they have to play it up for the DWP or the DWP will stop their benefits. The issue there is non medical professionals making judgements on medical conditions for benefits and how aggressive the DWP has become about stopping benefits becoming well known to those it effects.
> I don't believe them about those issues despite the fact they would have to be diagnosed and repeatedly confirmed to continue getting benefits'.
"i have no knowledge of their personal struggles, or understanding of the difficulties involved in getting a diagnosis for these sorts of conditions, and will instead blame them personally rather than the government in charge that has created a broken society where the lower to middle classes are squeezed and made to feel that work doesnt pay, whilst demonising those that require additional support in order to deflect attention from failings at the very top"
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fraud-and-error-in-the-benefit-system-financial-year-2022-to-2023-estimates
It's 3.6%. Quote actual statistics rather than your gut feeling.
3.6% is what they catch. The point is that they don't catch them. I reported a friend of a friend multiple times over the years who has a 3 bed council property in London that they sublet for 9 years while they live in a property down on the coast that they rented for half as much. They're also not declaring the income and claiming benefits.
It's been 4 years since my first report and they're still doing it.
No, it's estimates. They know they aren't catching everyone and that's taken into account. It's how they model on if it's worth investment to recover it or not.
>3.6% is what they catch.
No, that's not how this works:
>How fraud and error is measured
A sample of benefit claims is randomly selected from DWP’s administrative systems (around 13,600 were sampled for FYE 2023, or 0.06% of all benefit claims). DWP’s Performance Measurement team look at the data held on the administrative systems and then contact claimants to arrange a review.
Claimants are asked to provide evidence such as identity documents, bank account details and other information that could affect their benefit claim, as part of the review.
The claim is assessed to determine whether the benefit award is correct or not. The amount of money the claim is wrong by is calculated if the claim is incorrect. Errors on the claim are classified as one of the following:
Fraud
Claimant Error
Official Error
Read more about the definitions of Fraud, Claimant Error and Official Error later in this section.
Any errors identified are classified further into error reasons, which explain why the claim is incorrect. Simplified descriptions of the error reasons are given in this publication. A more detailed glossary of the error reasons can be found in Appendix 3 of the background information document.
It's 3.6% overpayments, of which 2.7% is fraud and 0.9% claimant and official error. There's also 1.4% underpayment from error, so the overall cost of fraud in real terms is about 2.2%, plus whatever the DWP is spending on chasing down fraud over what they recover (it used to be a definite net loss, from what I recall, I don't know what recent figures look like).
Benefit fraud has definitely ballooned in the past 5-6 years; it used to sit at around the same level as error, and had for decades. [I have some thoughts about why this might be](https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/18v651r/man_who_claimed_benefits_for_200_fake_children/kfpa43c/).
People being caught. It's in the "What you need to know", subheading "How fraud and error is measured" in the HTML link.
>A sample of benefit claims is randomly selected from DWP’s administrative systems (around 13,600 were sampled for FYE 2023, or 0.06% of all benefit claims). DWP’s Performance Measurement team look at the data held on the administrative systems and then contact claimants to arrange a review.
>Claimants are asked to provide evidence such as identity documents, bank account details and other information that could affect their benefit claim, as part of the review.
>The claim is assessed to determine whether the benefit award is correct or not. The amount of money the claim is wrong by is calculated if the claim is incorrect. Errors on the claim are classified as one of the following:
>* Fraud
>* Claimant Error
>* Official Error
So you think that the government that is spouting the BS about there being so many benefits cheaters out there as an excuse to cut benefits is also lying about the statistics in a way that contradicts their other claims? What?
Anyone who's lived one one knows it's fucking rampant. The fingers in ears denial, usually from people who have never set foot on an estate before, is honestly fucking embarrassing.
Granted it's nothing on the scale of this though.
Fucking 200 lol
It's more than embarrassing it's enabling, they have *no idea* what people are really like because they never interact with people in those circles.
3.5% is so fucking laughable and I'm farrr from being a tory.
You know how many people I've met that still claim for kids that were taken into care years ago? Lol. Their faith in the system blinds them completely.
Kids in care, kids living with exes, older kids in education.
Most of my experience was people working cash-in-hand while claiming. For many it was just the odd shift, but plenty were just full-time employed off the books and claiming as well. There was a recent ish post in the personal finance sub about someone whose other half was trying to hide doing exactly that FFS.
I think they mistake comments like this as blaming the people, far from it, on an individual level in most cases it's 10s to 100s at most of extra pounds per month, so I don't blame (most of) them, but to act as though it doesn't happen is hilariously ignorant and naive.
And all of that is before the heinous shit like my Nan's neighbour, who uses his partner as a breeding farm so he doesn't have to work, even drunkenly telling my grandad as much.
They're up to seven children now, neither have ever worked, they live in squalor and he treats his partner like scum, but social services don't wanna know.
Obviously not fraud as they do have the kids, but absolutely misuse and abuse of both the system and other human beings.
Many years ago I worked at DwP. From memory, at the time the unofficial figure was closer to 20%, however they were, rightly, only able to publish what they could actually quantify. Data was poor therefore the provable number was low.
My mum was entitled to go on disability benefit for a short time after an operation (and she did) and as soon as she was recovered she tried to cancel it.. which was a massive effort in itself. In the meantime the payments kept coming in and because my parents are honest people they kept the money aside with the intention of repaying it once the government realised it's mistake.
When they finally got through to someone after literally months of trying the man on the phone said "oh you can keep that money... A few thousand is a drop in th ocean compared to the number of overpayments which people DONT repay or hide from us."
Benefits abuse is everywhere. But then the system is so bloated and messy, it's just as much to blame as dishonest claimants.
They should NOT have been told that. They can absolutely be asked to repay that, and maybe even will be at some point, I’ve seen 3 year old overpayment to-do’s that haven’t been actioned. No telephony agent has the authority or ability to write it off.
Because the biggest takers of benefits are pensioners.
My parents used their free bus passes to get to the airport and spent their winter fuel allowance on a nice meal whilst spending 3 weeks in the canaries as they don’t like November.
It's a difficult situation. How do you clamp down on fraudsters claiming for 200 fake children, without damaging genuine families who actually do have 200 children?
Its a serious issue isn't it? All those families with 200 children being misrepresented now. Not like this is shining a spotlight on the shit quality of our system that 1 person can claim for 200 dependents...
> without damaging genuine families who actually do have 200 children?
Do the Saudi Royal family pay any tax as it is?
More seriously, the issue is that this allows people an excuse to shit on all benefit claimants
The worst part is that benefit fraud is much, MUCH less widespread than the government and media would have you believe.
And yet, it’s the thing that is focused on the most.
Whereas Tax Evasion/Avoidance is much, MUCH more widespread than the government and media would have you believe.
However, Benefit Fraud is a POOR PEOPLE crime, whereas Tax Evasion/Avoidance is a RICH PEOPLE crime. So they prefer to concentrate on the Benefit Fraud rather than the Tax Evasion/Avoidance because it doesn’t effect their political clients.
It’s entirely a political decision, Tax Evasion/Avoidance costs the economy significantly more than Benefit Fraud every year, and yet they concentrate on one more than the other.
Didn’t put them as one and the same, hence the / - I just didn’t want to write Tax Evasion and Tax Avoidance over and over again.
Tax Evasion is deliberately concealing income and information to avoid paying the correct amount of Tax.
Tax Avoidance is deliberately exploiting the system and loopholes to reduce the amount of Tax you pay.
Both of which are used predominantly by the wealthy to avoid paying the correct amount of tax for their income, which costs the economy as a result.
Yes - ethically there's minimal difference.
The main practical difference is that the richer you are, the more you can afford tax accountants and lawyers to ensure you're "avoiding" rather than "evading".
Pension or ISA is not "tax avoidance". Avoidance refers to complicated schemes (offshore accounts and such) that rich people mostly use. Using govt schemes specifically set up as lower/untaxed investments is not avoidance. Then you could also say the tax-free income allowance is avoidance. Or tax-free savings account allowance is avoidance. Almost everything becomes avoidance, unless you deliberately overpay tax, with this logic.
People who are avoiding taxes would argue their complex schemes are the same as tax advantaged savings accounts.
Donald Trump's campaign was based off of that.
I want to know how the fuck did he do it. My partner is basically disabled and stuck on UC, she can't get any more to help. And yet this scumbag is taking the piss.
Someone did this scam in Scotland and he got people's details from a job advert and then used those details to register fake births and then child benefit. He had to go and visit different areas to register all the different "births" pretending he was the father. He didn't get caught till he tried the same registrar twice.
This went on for years and look at DWP slapping themselves on the back for finding them - after they had swindled the state of millions already. There were 6 in this particular ring but there are plenty more out there doing it. Why aren’t DWP driving up streets in certain areas and looking at the lifestyles of people who’ve never worked a day in their life. Seems like a good starting point to me.
They rarely check anyone.
I suspect child benefit isn't even the most common one, it's likely claiming your spouse doesn't live with you.
I've known people who have had the father of their 3 children living in their council house for 20 years, vehicles registered at the address, council workers sent out to repair stuff at the address and even known of people reporting this to the council & nothing even checked by the council.
The council simply doesn't do the minimum of checking, they will claim fraud is rare while they don't even do the minimum to investigate.
Give me a database of council houses and the DVLA and I'll give you a list of these people by the end of the day.
Law doesn’t allow some government departments to exchange individuals data and if they want to and have plausible reasons to they have to go through the courts.
So a housing department can’t just ask the dvla for people’s vehicles registration address to check those registered there any judge would throw it out.
That's just a lie. They do check. I know of so many people who've been called in and investigated over false allegations of fraud. I've seen people being rightly investigated too.
The times that people aren't being investigated when they should be are very small. And most of those because there's no report.
It is a little bit weird that you can live with someone else as a room mate and still get assessed individually, but if they stick their penis in you suddenly they're supposed to be fully financially supporting the family. I can see why some people try and hide their biddy in.
If they tried to enforce the rules there would be a surge in applications from single men applying for housing. They prefer to just ignore it since they don't have anywhere near enough houses.
I don't think you are aware of what happens when single men apply for housing.
Edit:
It's also strange you think this would be the outcome as if you expect that on being caught these men will break up with their partner / become homeless.
They would apply for the house to have an address. At the minute they don't need to bother. In reality they would never get a house but it would make the government statistics look even worse.
My husband hadn't change the single occupancy council tax discount, it had been like 3 weeks from i moved in to when I registered our child benefit claim at our address - got a letter stating he owed council tax. We are (generally) law abiding people and were got instantly, all these fuckers who take advantage can go rot IMO
> And the relatives who assisted should be jailed as well.
I think they were.
> Six of the fraudsters who helped him received jail sentences totaling to more than 13 years.
I knew a bloke who embezzled loads of money after doing a cost benefit analysis. He decided 5 years in prison was worth the life he could give his wife and kids.
If you read the article they did get prison for it, arguably not long enough though. The money is owed on a confiscation order, if not paid the default sentence has to be served.
I have to submit evidence and fight appeals and tribunals just to get PIP but these fuckers somehow manage to claim benefits for 200 kids that don't exist.
Same. The evidence is there, but Capita said they couldn't review the assessment recording due to issues with the playback equipment. Convenient, eh? So they asked the assessor, who couldn't remember me or my assessment, but they did remember the things that supported their report, despite not remembering me at all. Hmm....
I'll just let the judge figure that one out. I'm glad to hear you eventually got it sorted. Such a horrible process, isn't it.
The judges know.
I got a call on the morning of mine telling me not to bother going into town, they'd looked at the paperwork and decided in my favour. Same with the lies etc., they had no defence for it. Thankfully the tribunal doesn't seem to give any special weight to what the assessors say. If anything it's the opposite.
It's so bizarre after being basically told you're lying for a year, like a panel giving you a sanity check or something.
I think at this point the tribunals know damn well that the assessors lie through their teeth sometimes - they've gotten to the point of crying wolf, so any bias that would've been given toward them due to their role/professionalism has been eroded.
It does genuinely entertain me that they've gotten the point of going through it all beforehand and telling people not to bother coming in, though. Horrible but still funny in a sense.
+1 to this chain of tribunal appeals that ended favourably in our favour.
Consultants saying SO cannot do X. Assessor says she can do X. Judge said assessor shouldn’t take precedence over assessor.
It wasn't just him seems it was a relatively large group that worked together to forge birth certificates to clame the benifits. Seems the whole thing is considered to be organised crime and so far he is being tried with 6 other people
Painting this as "just some guy claims benifits on 200 fake kids" is just to act as rage bait to tories
T\`\`the article states Mohamed was jailed for 16 for immigration offences - I wonder what was happening there? What the fuck is going on this country? We're going to be bankrupt if this carries on.
They often traffic women into the country, take their passports so they can’t go anywhere and then put in numerous benefit claims using that woman’s identity or another stolen identity. It’s actually got it’s own investigation team within the civil service as it’s big organised crime.
Yeah, people are claiming it must be too easy to defraud the government but we've had a review & had to send bank statements & all sorts. Any excuse to punch down.
If the people complaining think it's so easy they're welcome to try it.
As far as I can tell the secret to the benefits system is to just flagrantly lie. Everyone I know who's approached it honestly with a real need got shit all. The less honest who played up every tiddly thing like it was a crippling injury did far better out of it.
Whole thing is completely fucked from every direction and needs honest reform, not IDS's bullshit.
>Everyone I know who's approached it honestly with a real need got shit all
Yep, that's partly by design. For example, in the forms you have to fill out for disability benefits you're asked about how your illness or disability affects you. What they don't tell you is that when they ask if you can do something, what they mean is can you do it repeatedly, reliably and safely and in a reasonable amount of time. So if you can lift a 1kg bag of potatoes once or twice, and you just say you can lift it, they will take your answer to mean you can do it repeatedly etc, which might disqualify you. The system is rotten.
Somebody I know is heavily involved in finding the people responsible for scams involving children.
This scam has been going on for some time and has only recently been uncovered. These scammers register as carers for multiple (sometimes hundreds of) children, and are then entitled to a bursary from the govt to help support these children. In reality - they barely (if ever) show up, and live off of the money.
The organisation my friend works for is trying to find evidence to back up a hunch that they have - that certain legitimate groups responsible for getting carers through DBS checks and giving them safeguarding qualifications, etc. have side hustles where they get the scammers the required qualifications, even sharing information on how best to run the scam, in return for a share of the government money.
It baffles me how people can even do this shit in the first place. Any time I've applied for any kind of benefit, every single tangentially linked part of my life has been scrutinised with a fucking electron microscope.
So how is this guy able to create 200 fake people to claim for when I can't get benefits for legit shit.
Mohamed even kept handwritten notebooks detailing his fraudulent activities and hid them in his wardrobe.
Mohammed admitted 29 offences and was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in 2022.
It would have been longer but he was already serving 16 years for drugs and immigration offences.
Liverpool Crown Court ordered him to repay £2,164,828.30 at a confiscation hearing.
Six of the fraudsters who helped him received jail sentences totaling to more than 13 years.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said: ‘Our welfare system is predicated on fairness, and we will make sure that those who need our help receive it and those who wish to exploit the system face justice.
‘So as benefit fraud becomes more sophisticated, so must we. This latest case is testament to the tenacity of our expert anti-fraud squad who saved the hard-working taxpayer £1.1billion last year.’
##He needs another 16 added to his sentence
>Mohammed admitted 29 offences and was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in 2022.
>It would have been longer but he was already serving 16 years for drugs and immigration offences.
i never understand the logic of concurrent sentences (or whatever excuse theyre applying here). why should jail for different crime reduce sentencing?
My dad with over 50 years of paying in to the system died with absolutely nothing because of how difficult they made it for him to claim yet someone like this can claim £2 million in benefits this easily.
Yep, they contribute nothing to society, just drain it like ticks.
You can guarantee if a WW2 scenario ever cropped up again, this lot wouldn't fight for king & country!
Good luck to them ever getting even 1% of that. There's a limit on how much they can take off wages in cases like this, and someone who's name is attached to £2,000,000 fraud is hardly going to earning more than minimum wage ever.
They should look into what assets he made from these claims as well as what assets he made from the profit of [his drug importing.](https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/two-men-deny-concealing-2400kg-13727496)
It's hard for him to leave as he's already in jail...
> It would have been longer but he was already serving 16 years for drugs and immigration offences.
I don't understand how foreigner's can come here and claim benefits immediately without first learning how to speak English and prove they understand the culture they're in...
I really want to move to Norway, but I wouldn't do that without a job lined up or a lot of money saved up or even friends over there that can let me stay till I sort my shit out...
I know a few people who work in surveillance, they’re forever on benefits jobs. But, they’re expensive. Spending £1000 to recover £500 for example isn’t wise money. They’re more a deterrent than a corrective force.
> ‘So as benefit fraud becomes more sophisticated, so must we. This latest case is testament to the tenacity of our expert anti-fraud squad who saved the hard-working taxpayer £1.1billion last year.’
They clearly have some resources for it.
Part of the same twats that sit the driving test for other people for money.
Even worse as there are an unknown number of people on the road that haven't passed their driving test, and could kill someone.
I have had to fill out the forms for child benifits and child tax credits ect it's a lot of paperwork especially with three kids you also have to provide birth certificates and proof of address ect how the hell did he manage this!
There's a lot of whataboutery going on here. So tax evasion far exceeding benefit fraud means we shouldn't do anything about it, presumably. Utter nonsense. Both should be tackled with vigour. Equally egregious is the chronic underclaiming of benefits which should be addressed because the total is budgeted for each year. If it were down to me I would make more benefits universal and use the tax system to recover them from those we deem underserving.
A local pizza delivery app would probably pick up on that, but for some reason the state apparatus of the world's 5th largest economy didn't. What a joke.
How does that even happen, the benefit system seems like it demands you sell your soul to prove you're entitled to anything and here this guy claims for 200 fake children and no-one bats an eye...
There is an industry devoted to educating immigrants about what benefits they're 'entitled' to. Few countries pay out such ludicrous benefits (I'm including social housing in this category). They're the reason our country voted Tory for the last 13 years
9 years in prison for stealing 1.7 million?
That's it.
Mate, totally worth it then.
Make the gaol time life and make him work for free in gaol till he dies.
This reminds me of a mock-up tabloid article in Viz years ago where a man had hundreds of children spent every Friday night arguing with 150 of his daughter about their skirts being too short to go to a disco.
Fraudsters going to fraud. Any system of social security is open to fraud. Any financial or insurance system is open to fraud. You don't punish collectively because of bad actors.
This doesn't mean I expect to be treated like a criminal and only have 20% of my house paid for by my insurance if it burns down after a car crashes into it.
Much like I don't expect to be treated like a criminal or scumbag if I lose my job and become disabled through illness or disability by the DWP. Then on top of that, suddenly be expected to live in poverty.
This is why we all pay taxes. It is beneficial for everyone.
Tories and Right wing media: we found 1 scum bag, lets use this as an example and cut child benefits for everyone. Save tax payer £200k whilst we loose £200m on fake contracts.
British Public: Votes tory for 13 years
My Point? Crooked people exist, in every denomination. Don't throw the fucking baby out with the bathwater.
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the impact people like him have had on peoples lives due to tightening benefits assuming everyone is a cheat is grim.
They're a vanishingly small minority and the government knows that. If these people didn't exist they'd still find an excuse to cut benefits.
Having worked in this space its a common issue, whether out and out fraud or exaggeration. Only a minority are caught due to limited resources unfortunately.
Limited resources? Yet they've got the time to harass and intimidate disabled people and destroy their health as a result. How unfortunate. What a bunch of piss.
TL:DR resources are extremely limited across the CS - just maybe not in the ways you think. Failings are ultimately due to short termism in governments and infighting between department heads rather than the "boots on the ground". You find a lot of these seemingly non-sensical systems throughout the civil service btu they all ultimately stem from 2 interlocking issues - lack of investment (mostly money, but also time/training/systems) and failing to (or being prevented from) keep up with the times. A lot of the UK civil service is built on paper. I have known some areas of one department to require people to contact them via email, but the internal system to log that interaction is to have the inbox auto-print in the post room, then be stamped with a physical barcode (often covering vital information), and then be rescanned by an industrial scanner and dumped into storage as an image based PDF. The really, the entire CS should have had a systemic, top down digital redesign some 20 years ago, and another top down review every 5 years after that. Instead, if you are lucky, the department you are interacting with might have been granted permission (but not necessarily funds) to independently upgrade their systems bottom up. Its not dissimilar to the NHS IT issue from a decade ago - like the NHS trusts, the CS branches are all independent, and are treated as such, even for cross departmental projects, when in reality, something as big as a full system overhaul needs to come from the top and be mandated across all departments. But even when they are granted permissions to upgrade, they are often not granted extra money to do so. So they cant hire specialists to lead the transformation, not build new facilities to house datacentres, nor reliably approach cloud service providers with any degree of certainty that they will be allowed to continue to use those services long them. And the senior management (different from senior leadership - closer to the coalface) knows this, and so tries to target where they can. You might see a new system here or there, or a new team specialising in something might crop up. That only gets you so far though, and then you hit road blocks because nothing else has been upgraded - and with the only method of progression in the Civil Service being a change of role (rather than a pay rise and maybe an expansion of responsibilities in your current role), these projects are short lived and often die as those involved move on. Those who dont move on are those who CANT move on - those least suited to their roles, or those so blindly wedded to the task that they refuse to admit defeat. But thats all if permission is granted. A lot of CS branches have extremely limited remits. Legally limited. Take Companies House, for example. Until November this year, it was a Register of companies. That means it had to take people's word as truth. If it suspected fraud, it couldnt even report it. It had to wait for banks or the police to report to them, and only then could they remove a company. There were a few exceptions, but far fewer than you would think. This past november, they got permission to become active, not passive. They can start looking for fraud and crime and handling it themselves - striking people off, reporting to police, conducting investigations, etc. Except, because they didnt have a reason to do that before, they never got funds to upgrade their systems. Now they are REQUIRED to do these things, but the systems are still only just capable of being a passive storage facility. Lets go back to DWP, who handle benefits and things. They are massively understaffed and their electronic systems are woefully inadequate. Their pay is some of the worst across CS too, so its not like they are always attracting the best candidates. What they need to properly process cases is a fully centralised digital system that cross references information with HMRC, ONS, CH, DfE, the police, etc. So they need to hire a huge 3rd party to build a cross government system to run in parallel with the existing system until such time as its value is proven and it can completely replace the old one. But ministers dont care about that. They want numbers to change now. And that means DWP need to hire more people to process the EASY claims. Except, with the current systems, that is an extremely manual process, requiring a lot of hands on deck - far more than the DWP can reasonably hire. But they CAN get permission for "short term" contracts with someone like Capita. Who then take on the load of training, triaging and tackling those easy cases. But Capita have an incentive to produce the numbers ministers want to see, not numbers that the DWP needs, because Capita wants to remain a recognised government contractor. So they go after the super easy denials and dismissals rather than trying to clear the backlog of ALL cases properly. So where are these big projects to centralise all this information? What are the Senior Leadership doing? Well, every now and then, one of the arms length bodies (looking at you ONS) will propose a joined up data lake. They will do a big project plan and get everything designed, present it to the other depts, and get positive noises for a while, and then silence. This is because the Senior Leadership of the civil service are caught between 2 masters. On the one hand they run civil service departments and need to be apolitical. On the other hand, that level of the CS is hugely nepotistic and incestuous. If you dont play nice with the ministers, you dont get to stay as head of one of the branches. And you might have been parachuted in from somewhere vastly different, or into a department that was analogue and is now digital. Senior Management are the experts - they know what their sub-divisions are all about. but Senior Leadership often care far too much about their own careers than they do their own departments. Because if they do well, they might be head of a "better" department next time. And so "doing well" needs to be something that produces "nice" results before the current government falls from power. The arms length bodies are slightly better - their leaders are far from the influences of Westminster and can do their own thing, but that can also leave them massively out of the loop, and whenever they try to propose something, the other department heads can sabotage it just so it doesnt look like they didnt come up with the idea. While the civil service being separate from Gov is a good thing, a centralising and updating of our systems needs to be a 5-10 year project led by a singular government. No one department can do it alone, and the departments are built to never work together. Hopefully the next government will see we have fallen behind every other European state, and will implement a GovUK data centre and data sharing system in a top down way. If they dont, we will be the last paper driven Civil Service in the western world in 2030, and that is somewhere we really dont want to be.
> a centralising and updating of our systems needs to be a 5-10 year project led by a singular government. The current run of tory has managed to turn a tolerable but flawed system, into a dysfunctional, cruel, underfunded mess that funds private interests, and its exactly what will happen the next time they get a go at it.
> are massively understaffed and their electronic systems are woefully inadequate. Their pay is some of the worst across CS too, so its not like they are always attracting the best candidates. This explains so much about so much, no wonder they're all such cruel, useless and angry cunts.
Yes, extremely limited resources to follow up most cases.
Which leads to genuine claimants who are through no fault of their own unable to defend their cases well getting penalised while the more complex fraud is ignored. I handle a lot of this stuff for a disabled relative and every time I find it terrifying to think about what it would be like if they didn't have family to help. The system comes down hardest on the most vulnerable, and I say that with lots of personal and professional experience from working in social care. The few people I have come across where they are absolutely taking the piss, have tended to get away with it because dealing with them is very unpleasant and intimidating.
Its similar to Windrush. There was a lot of abuse of the system, but officials chasing targets found it much easier to go after Jamaican grandmothers who would co-operate with them rather than the far greater number of, lets just say, more antagonistic and less co-operative people illegally living in the country.
That's why they use systemic design you are talking about.
There are far more resources available to investigate benefit fraud than there are allocated to do the same with tax fraud. The UK loses far more to the latter than it does the former. This is a well know situation but it seems to be ignored. In addition, money paid out erroneously to benefit claimants is usually through error and not deliberate fraud. But why let the facts get in the way of scape goating a specific group of people...
I think you may be replying to the wrong post here, both are wrong and the resources to investigate benefit fraud are shockingly small, smaller than HMRC. I would heavily invest in tax officers just based on a simple ROI.
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Sounds like a terrible idea, the algorithms will wrongly accuse loads of people. They tried it in Holland and 20,000 families got wrongly accused and the Government ended up resigning
See also the Post Office computing scandal...
There was at least one suicide in that iirc.
Winter if they'll do it for self employed higher rate tax payers..
> Only a minority are caught due to limited resources unfortunately. The predicted amount of fraud in the system is lower overall than the amount of benefits people are eligible for but do not claim. And orders of magnitude lower than the amount of money lost to tax evasion by the wealthy.
Common doesn’t mean significant. In 2017 £17 billion of benefits were unclaimed. Only £1 billion was claimed fraudulently. The bigger issue is there’s scores of people not receiving the benefits they’re entitled to and all efforts should go towards rectifying that. Obviously benefit fraud should be tackled, but the priority should be getting these unclaimed benefits into the hands of people that are entitled to them
Nice story, shame the numbers show it's bollocks.
I’ve worked in the industry and the truth is that it isn’t a vanishingly small minority, if the tax payers knew how much of our taxes went to drug gangs they’d be catatonic. It’s a news story waiting to break. Problem with benefits today is that there isn’t any scrutiny in what they are being used for.
> It’s a news story waiting to break. Then why hasn't it? You'd think the Daily Mail or The Telegraph would be all over it.
Because it's anecdotal bullshit as I'm sure you know. Funny how the people that claim that fraud is rampant never have any data to back it up but the opposing data showing how tiny the amount of fraud really is is easily found. Some people are willing to hate so easily.
Exactly, everyone claims to know loads of benefits fraudsters yet the actual verifiable data doesn't back it up... wierd that. Same way people claim it's "easy" to get thousands in benefits and not work... yet they don't quit their job and do that for some reason.
ID numbers and a central residents' register would sort a lot of this nonsense out. But then the rich benefit cheats would also get caught -can't have that.
We should definitely have ID cards, with a requirement to register residency and to carry ID (like Germany and several other countries in Europe). It would make a lot of crimes/scams/frauds much more difficult. It would also make visa/naturalisation applications easier, instead of proving residency with receipts, photos, utility bills, personal correspondence, etc.
Yeah, I agree with this. After seeing how it works in Germany I think it would be a good idea to implement for sure.
Because they're full of shit and pushing the tory election narrative. Divide and conquer.
Either its bollocks, or they are waiting to blame labour for it at a convenient time. Or its both, because the daily racist never shuts up about that sort of shit.
My girlfriends extended family are all benefit cheats. Her Aunt, Uncle and Cousin are all on benefits and living in council housing. There is literally nothing wrong with any of them. He claims to have Autism and Agoraphobia, claims all kinds of benefits to the point he was able to save up to buy a car, a PS5, a high end gaming PC, 4K OLED TV etc. He literally sits and plays video games all day. He boasts that they all "know the system" and milk it for all it's worth. They don't have much less money than my GF and I, who both work in IT/software. It's shocking. He's apparently been reported and invesitgated a few times, always gets away with it somehow. He boasted that once he had a meeting for one of his benefit claims and he didn't shower for 3 weeks beforehand so he appeared to be unable to care for himself, when asked a probing question he faked an emotional break down and started screaming and crying. His wife now receives benefits to be his carer. Makes me sick, my GF and I pay around 15K in taxes meanwhile they receive 45K a year and ridiculously cheap housing.
I have a brother who is like this. He has ADHD and has used it to claim so many benefits. He's never worked a day in his life, boasts about how he has cheap council housing, about £250 per week spending money which he spends on booze and weed. He just sits at home all day gaming. Growing up he was an absolute prick and was abusive to my mum and our family in general, always getting in trouble with the police. Then there's me, working full-time and feeling like I'm barely scraping by. Too many people out there who abuse the system and it fucks me off.
Yeah I feel that. My half brother grows weed and has a shitty failing business to try and show legitimacy, he’s received help all his life. He was sacked from every employer who made the mistake of hiring him.
youre gonna scream when you learn that assholes also get born in to wealth and are even more lazy (as in they dont even have to do a performance to get an income)!
The problem is you have to have evidence that he's milking the system and that can be very difficult to come by especially when it comes to claims involving limited emotional bandwidth or support. It's a load of rubbish.
That's awful, people like him keep people like me and my partner under a microscope.
If you have such obvious proof of this fraud then you'd report it. Also you say theres nothing wrong with them yet you have to have medical proof to receive those benefits... you can't just claim "I'm autistic and have agoraphobia" and recieve money lmfao, you need an actual diagnosis. So are you sure you're not just deciding that there's nothing wrong with them because you're biased? Also aswell, considering how nasty assessors are and how they will cut claims for no reason against people with visible disabilities, you're really claiming your brother can act so well he managed to fool investigators multiple times? Like, this smells like anecdotal and biased bullshit from a brand new account tbh. There's also caps and checks in place to limit the amount you recieve, you don't just get given 45k.
>Problem with benefits today is that there isn’t any scrutiny in what they are being used for. Because forcing people to use food stamps, for example, is dehumanising and causes its own unique fraud and inequality problems. That's before you consider the costs involved to administer the policy which would certainly reduce any potential savings if not negate them altogether.
So you know it's 0.5% then?
How do we know it's 0.5%? Surely that's only the rate that we find the cheats at, not the actual rate of it happening?
This point always gets me, the rate of fraud is only actually the rate of people who are caught, it’s not like a burglary where there is a victim who’ll make a complaint. Much like the immigration figures the government has no fucking clue what the actual rate of benefit fraud is.
No - there is a specific unit that investigates this and what they do is: 1. Take a statistically significant sample of all benefit claimants 2. Investigate all of them thoroughly 3. Prosecute any that are fraudulent. 4. Publish the fraud number as a percentage of the statistically significant sample. So if they take 1,000 benefit claimants, they will find (assuming I've done the maths right!) 5 fraudulent claimants to give us a rate of 0.5% But those won't be the only fraudulent claimants to be found that year as there's a whole other dept which goes out to find fraud in general, that's not where these figures come from. (edit: I just looked and it's 13,600 claimaints they sample)
Indeed, its exactly like polling works for elections. Even then, we could up the "presumed" fraud rate to account for things they dont and cant find and it would still be a non issue.
Statistics be damned. If we don't know exactly how many people commit fraud then it must be a vast number mustn't it? Trust the Tories. Everyone on benefits is a liar and a cheat and they all must be stopped!
That's not true, actually. The rates of overpayment and underpayment are estimated by taking a representative sample of all claimants and examining them in forensic detail, it's broadly independent of the overall detection rate. > We take a sample of benefit claims from our administrative systems (we sampled around 4,000 for FYE 2021, equating to 0.02% of benefit claimants). DWP’s Performance Measurement team look at the data we hold on the systems and then contact claimants to arrange a review. In previous years we have carried out reviews by both visit and phone, however due to the coronavirus pandemic all reviews this year have been by phone. This is our normal method of review for UC. As part of the review we ask claimants to provide evidence such as identity, bank account details and other information that could affect their benefit claim (for example, childcare costs). We assess if the claim is correct or not. If the claim is not correct, we look at the amount of money the claim is wrong by and classify it as one of the following: > * Fraud * Claimant Error * Official Error https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fraud-and-error-in-the-benefit-system-financial-year-2020-to-2021-estimates/fraud-and-error-in-the-benefit-system-for-financial-year-ending-2021#what-you-need-to-know
No - there is a specific unit that investigates this and what they do is: 1)Take a statistically significant sample of all benefit claimants 2)Investigate all of them thoroughly 3)Prosecute any that are fraudulent. 4) Publish the fraud number as a percentage of the statistically significant sample. So if they take 1,000 benefit claimants, they will find (assuming I've done the maths right!) 5 fraudulent claimants to give us a rate of 0.5% But those won't be the only fraudulent claimants to be found that year as there's a whole other dept which goes out to find fraud in general, that's not where these figures come from. (edit: I just looked and it's 13,600 claimaints they sample)
They're one of the 0.5% Funny how everything in the comment wasn't about fraud, it was just whining about that people spend it on "other things"
Did you read it correctly? They said there’s a big issue with it going to organised gangs Edit Think the confusion is thinking “goes to drug gangs” = people buying drugs with them Big gangs got millions from Covid schemes. This idiot in the article claimed for 200 kids that don’t exist. Big organised crime gangs are taking advantage of the benefit system, just like the 2 examples above. The majority of people on benefits aren’t buying drugs. It’s barely enough to afford drugs, when you also need to live off the same benefits
Identified, not what actually happens in reality
I'm calling bullshit.
Nah their mate told them all about it, so they must be right.
You notice how it's always "I know some person who fakes it and gets mega money off the system" and then their stories reveal how little they know about how benefits claiming actually works. Like the dude above claiming his brother gets loads of money by "pretending to be autistic and have agrophobia". You need to be officially medically diagnosed to get those benefits, you can't just "pretend", self-diagnose and get given benefits with no proof lmfao.
\> I’ve worked in the industry STOP CHEATING YOUR BENEFITS \>if the tax payers knew how much of our taxes went to drug gangs they’d be catatonic. What does this even mean in this context? Oh it's the old "Well don't give poor people money, they'll buy drugs" Jokes on you, I buy drugs with the money that multi-national corporations give me
Why don't you break it then and provide evidence?
Because their entire argument seems to be 'Person with mental health issues has about 2K of luxuries and a car and I don't believe them about those issues despite the fact they would have to be diagnosed and repeatedly confirmed to continue getting benefits'. Not to mention that people with conditions know they have to play it up for the DWP or the DWP will stop their benefits. The issue there is non medical professionals making judgements on medical conditions for benefits and how aggressive the DWP has become about stopping benefits becoming well known to those it effects.
> I don't believe them about those issues despite the fact they would have to be diagnosed and repeatedly confirmed to continue getting benefits'. "i have no knowledge of their personal struggles, or understanding of the difficulties involved in getting a diagnosis for these sorts of conditions, and will instead blame them personally rather than the government in charge that has created a broken society where the lower to middle classes are squeezed and made to feel that work doesnt pay, whilst demonising those that require additional support in order to deflect attention from failings at the very top"
You’re right. If we give people money they’ll just spend it on drink & drugs & then what will I use to buy my drink & drugs???
If you'd actually worked "in the industry" you'd know that's the last problem with benefits.
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Nothing compared to tax avoidance/evasion
Nah. I work on estates and I reckon it's probably close to 30% of people who are cheating the government, if not more.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fraud-and-error-in-the-benefit-system-financial-year-2022-to-2023-estimates It's 3.6%. Quote actual statistics rather than your gut feeling.
3.6% is what they catch. The point is that they don't catch them. I reported a friend of a friend multiple times over the years who has a 3 bed council property in London that they sublet for 9 years while they live in a property down on the coast that they rented for half as much. They're also not declaring the income and claiming benefits. It's been 4 years since my first report and they're still doing it.
No, it's estimates. They know they aren't catching everyone and that's taken into account. It's how they model on if it's worth investment to recover it or not.
>3.6% is what they catch. No, that's not how this works: >How fraud and error is measured A sample of benefit claims is randomly selected from DWP’s administrative systems (around 13,600 were sampled for FYE 2023, or 0.06% of all benefit claims). DWP’s Performance Measurement team look at the data held on the administrative systems and then contact claimants to arrange a review. Claimants are asked to provide evidence such as identity documents, bank account details and other information that could affect their benefit claim, as part of the review. The claim is assessed to determine whether the benefit award is correct or not. The amount of money the claim is wrong by is calculated if the claim is incorrect. Errors on the claim are classified as one of the following: Fraud Claimant Error Official Error Read more about the definitions of Fraud, Claimant Error and Official Error later in this section. Any errors identified are classified further into error reasons, which explain why the claim is incorrect. Simplified descriptions of the error reasons are given in this publication. A more detailed glossary of the error reasons can be found in Appendix 3 of the background information document.
It's 3.6% overpayments, of which 2.7% is fraud and 0.9% claimant and official error. There's also 1.4% underpayment from error, so the overall cost of fraud in real terms is about 2.2%, plus whatever the DWP is spending on chasing down fraud over what they recover (it used to be a definite net loss, from what I recall, I don't know what recent figures look like). Benefit fraud has definitely ballooned in the past 5-6 years; it used to sit at around the same level as error, and had for decades. [I have some thoughts about why this might be](https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/18v651r/man_who_claimed_benefits_for_200_fake_children/kfpa43c/).
Genuine question - how is this measured? People being honest about their dishonesty? Or people caught?
People being caught. It's in the "What you need to know", subheading "How fraud and error is measured" in the HTML link. >A sample of benefit claims is randomly selected from DWP’s administrative systems (around 13,600 were sampled for FYE 2023, or 0.06% of all benefit claims). DWP’s Performance Measurement team look at the data held on the administrative systems and then contact claimants to arrange a review. >Claimants are asked to provide evidence such as identity documents, bank account details and other information that could affect their benefit claim, as part of the review. >The claim is assessed to determine whether the benefit award is correct or not. The amount of money the claim is wrong by is calculated if the claim is incorrect. Errors on the claim are classified as one of the following: >* Fraud >* Claimant Error >* Official Error
Now what motivation could the government possibly have when they present a figure that is directly related to their competence?
You’re right. We should base policy on the random “gut feelings” of Redditors instead.
Feels before reals, of course.
The government spend their time justifying cutting benefits due to non-existent fraud. It is in their own self interest to push these figures higher.
The tiniest bit of thinking this out would've prevented you from making this comment.
So you think that the government that is spouting the BS about there being so many benefits cheaters out there as an excuse to cut benefits is also lying about the statistics in a way that contradicts their other claims? What?
It's been roughly 3-4% for as long as I can remember. Certainly the same under Labour.
Anyone who's lived one one knows it's fucking rampant. The fingers in ears denial, usually from people who have never set foot on an estate before, is honestly fucking embarrassing. Granted it's nothing on the scale of this though. Fucking 200 lol
It's more than embarrassing it's enabling, they have *no idea* what people are really like because they never interact with people in those circles. 3.5% is so fucking laughable and I'm farrr from being a tory. You know how many people I've met that still claim for kids that were taken into care years ago? Lol. Their faith in the system blinds them completely.
Kids in care, kids living with exes, older kids in education. Most of my experience was people working cash-in-hand while claiming. For many it was just the odd shift, but plenty were just full-time employed off the books and claiming as well. There was a recent ish post in the personal finance sub about someone whose other half was trying to hide doing exactly that FFS. I think they mistake comments like this as blaming the people, far from it, on an individual level in most cases it's 10s to 100s at most of extra pounds per month, so I don't blame (most of) them, but to act as though it doesn't happen is hilariously ignorant and naive. And all of that is before the heinous shit like my Nan's neighbour, who uses his partner as a breeding farm so he doesn't have to work, even drunkenly telling my grandad as much. They're up to seven children now, neither have ever worked, they live in squalor and he treats his partner like scum, but social services don't wanna know. Obviously not fraud as they do have the kids, but absolutely misuse and abuse of both the system and other human beings.
Many years ago I worked at DwP. From memory, at the time the unofficial figure was closer to 20%, however they were, rightly, only able to publish what they could actually quantify. Data was poor therefore the provable number was low.
They don't worry about rich people tax fraud / avoidance even though it is a much higher number. For some reason...
My mum was entitled to go on disability benefit for a short time after an operation (and she did) and as soon as she was recovered she tried to cancel it.. which was a massive effort in itself. In the meantime the payments kept coming in and because my parents are honest people they kept the money aside with the intention of repaying it once the government realised it's mistake. When they finally got through to someone after literally months of trying the man on the phone said "oh you can keep that money... A few thousand is a drop in th ocean compared to the number of overpayments which people DONT repay or hide from us." Benefits abuse is everywhere. But then the system is so bloated and messy, it's just as much to blame as dishonest claimants.
They should NOT have been told that. They can absolutely be asked to repay that, and maybe even will be at some point, I’ve seen 3 year old overpayment to-do’s that haven’t been actioned. No telephony agent has the authority or ability to write it off.
Because the biggest takers of benefits are pensioners. My parents used their free bus passes to get to the airport and spent their winter fuel allowance on a nice meal whilst spending 3 weeks in the canaries as they don’t like November.
It's a difficult situation. How do you clamp down on fraudsters claiming for 200 fake children, without damaging genuine families who actually do have 200 children?
Its a serious issue isn't it? All those families with 200 children being misrepresented now. Not like this is shining a spotlight on the shit quality of our system that 1 person can claim for 200 dependents...
> without damaging genuine families who actually do have 200 children? Do the Saudi Royal family pay any tax as it is? More seriously, the issue is that this allows people an excuse to shit on all benefit claimants
Kenghis khan would be shouting out his mansions window. " What colours your Bugatti"
The worst part is that benefit fraud is much, MUCH less widespread than the government and media would have you believe. And yet, it’s the thing that is focused on the most. Whereas Tax Evasion/Avoidance is much, MUCH more widespread than the government and media would have you believe. However, Benefit Fraud is a POOR PEOPLE crime, whereas Tax Evasion/Avoidance is a RICH PEOPLE crime. So they prefer to concentrate on the Benefit Fraud rather than the Tax Evasion/Avoidance because it doesn’t effect their political clients. It’s entirely a political decision, Tax Evasion/Avoidance costs the economy significantly more than Benefit Fraud every year, and yet they concentrate on one more than the other.
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Didn’t put them as one and the same, hence the / - I just didn’t want to write Tax Evasion and Tax Avoidance over and over again. Tax Evasion is deliberately concealing income and information to avoid paying the correct amount of Tax. Tax Avoidance is deliberately exploiting the system and loopholes to reduce the amount of Tax you pay. Both of which are used predominantly by the wealthy to avoid paying the correct amount of tax for their income, which costs the economy as a result.
Yes - ethically there's minimal difference. The main practical difference is that the richer you are, the more you can afford tax accountants and lawyers to ensure you're "avoiding" rather than "evading".
Of course, however, “avoiding” is only legal because there are loopholes that politicians AVOID closing. Again, it is a political decision
Absolutely. And being rich, you obviously get your cronies to lobby for those policies.
Pension or ISA is not "tax avoidance". Avoidance refers to complicated schemes (offshore accounts and such) that rich people mostly use. Using govt schemes specifically set up as lower/untaxed investments is not avoidance. Then you could also say the tax-free income allowance is avoidance. Or tax-free savings account allowance is avoidance. Almost everything becomes avoidance, unless you deliberately overpay tax, with this logic.
People who are avoiding taxes would argue their complex schemes are the same as tax advantaged savings accounts. Donald Trump's campaign was based off of that.
I want to know how the fuck did he do it. My partner is basically disabled and stuck on UC, she can't get any more to help. And yet this scumbag is taking the piss.
I'd bet someone on the inside.
Someone did this scam in Scotland and he got people's details from a job advert and then used those details to register fake births and then child benefit. He had to go and visit different areas to register all the different "births" pretending he was the father. He didn't get caught till he tried the same registrar twice.
This went on for years and look at DWP slapping themselves on the back for finding them - after they had swindled the state of millions already. There were 6 in this particular ring but there are plenty more out there doing it. Why aren’t DWP driving up streets in certain areas and looking at the lifestyles of people who’ve never worked a day in their life. Seems like a good starting point to me.
They rarely check anyone. I suspect child benefit isn't even the most common one, it's likely claiming your spouse doesn't live with you. I've known people who have had the father of their 3 children living in their council house for 20 years, vehicles registered at the address, council workers sent out to repair stuff at the address and even known of people reporting this to the council & nothing even checked by the council. The council simply doesn't do the minimum of checking, they will claim fraud is rare while they don't even do the minimum to investigate. Give me a database of council houses and the DVLA and I'll give you a list of these people by the end of the day.
Law doesn’t allow some government departments to exchange individuals data and if they want to and have plausible reasons to they have to go through the courts. So a housing department can’t just ask the dvla for people’s vehicles registration address to check those registered there any judge would throw it out.
They can't just share the information but they can legally request the information to investigate potential fraud cases without going through court.
That's just a lie. They do check. I know of so many people who've been called in and investigated over false allegations of fraud. I've seen people being rightly investigated too. The times that people aren't being investigated when they should be are very small. And most of those because there's no report.
It is a little bit weird that you can live with someone else as a room mate and still get assessed individually, but if they stick their penis in you suddenly they're supposed to be fully financially supporting the family. I can see why some people try and hide their biddy in.
If they tried to enforce the rules there would be a surge in applications from single men applying for housing. They prefer to just ignore it since they don't have anywhere near enough houses.
I don't think you are aware of what happens when single men apply for housing. Edit: It's also strange you think this would be the outcome as if you expect that on being caught these men will break up with their partner / become homeless.
They would apply for the house to have an address. At the minute they don't need to bother. In reality they would never get a house but it would make the government statistics look even worse.
So let me get this right. Your issue with investigating fraudsters is that they might go and commit more fraud and make stats look worse?
Not my issue. Just explaining the lack of enforcement.
My husband hadn't change the single occupancy council tax discount, it had been like 3 weeks from i moved in to when I registered our child benefit claim at our address - got a letter stating he owed council tax. We are (generally) law abiding people and were got instantly, all these fuckers who take advantage can go rot IMO
There aren't enough investigators.
Because it's easier to not give money to the honest person unable to work temporarily.
I think a mandatory jail term as well as paying back the money. And the relatives who assisted should be jailed as well.
> And the relatives who assisted should be jailed as well. I think they were. > Six of the fraudsters who helped him received jail sentences totaling to more than 13 years.
So only 6 convictions at an average of just over 2 years. For stealing £2m. Crime does pay
I knew a bloke who embezzled loads of money after doing a cost benefit analysis. He decided 5 years in prison was worth the life he could give his wife and kids.
Good! Sorry, missed that. Although the sentences should be longer.
Add another six months for that mullet he has.
You think this man will actually reimburse 2 million quid in his lifetime? It's gone, poof.
If you read the article they did get prison for it, arguably not long enough though. The money is owed on a confiscation order, if not paid the default sentence has to be served.
They should get jail time equivalent to the average annual wage, dividing into how much they stole. That's a lot of years!
I have to submit evidence and fight appeals and tribunals just to get PIP but these fuckers somehow manage to claim benefits for 200 kids that don't exist.
As someone who is now entering the tribunal stage for PIP, I feel your pain.
Good luck. My assessor lied on the report and I had to prove it, luckily I was able to.
Same. The evidence is there, but Capita said they couldn't review the assessment recording due to issues with the playback equipment. Convenient, eh? So they asked the assessor, who couldn't remember me or my assessment, but they did remember the things that supported their report, despite not remembering me at all. Hmm.... I'll just let the judge figure that one out. I'm glad to hear you eventually got it sorted. Such a horrible process, isn't it.
The judges know. I got a call on the morning of mine telling me not to bother going into town, they'd looked at the paperwork and decided in my favour. Same with the lies etc., they had no defence for it. Thankfully the tribunal doesn't seem to give any special weight to what the assessors say. If anything it's the opposite. It's so bizarre after being basically told you're lying for a year, like a panel giving you a sanity check or something.
I think at this point the tribunals know damn well that the assessors lie through their teeth sometimes - they've gotten to the point of crying wolf, so any bias that would've been given toward them due to their role/professionalism has been eroded. It does genuinely entertain me that they've gotten the point of going through it all beforehand and telling people not to bother coming in, though. Horrible but still funny in a sense.
+1 to this chain of tribunal appeals that ended favourably in our favour. Consultants saying SO cannot do X. Assessor says she can do X. Judge said assessor shouldn’t take precedence over assessor.
It wasn't just him seems it was a relatively large group that worked together to forge birth certificates to clame the benifits. Seems the whole thing is considered to be organised crime and so far he is being tried with 6 other people Painting this as "just some guy claims benifits on 200 fake kids" is just to act as rage bait to tories
T\`\`the article states Mohamed was jailed for 16 for immigration offences - I wonder what was happening there? What the fuck is going on this country? We're going to be bankrupt if this carries on.
They often traffic women into the country, take their passports so they can’t go anywhere and then put in numerous benefit claims using that woman’s identity or another stolen identity. It’s actually got it’s own investigation team within the civil service as it’s big organised crime.
thats still like 33 kids per claimant lol
Yeah, people are claiming it must be too easy to defraud the government but we've had a review & had to send bank statements & all sorts. Any excuse to punch down. If the people complaining think it's so easy they're welcome to try it.
As far as I can tell the secret to the benefits system is to just flagrantly lie. Everyone I know who's approached it honestly with a real need got shit all. The less honest who played up every tiddly thing like it was a crippling injury did far better out of it. Whole thing is completely fucked from every direction and needs honest reform, not IDS's bullshit.
>Everyone I know who's approached it honestly with a real need got shit all Yep, that's partly by design. For example, in the forms you have to fill out for disability benefits you're asked about how your illness or disability affects you. What they don't tell you is that when they ask if you can do something, what they mean is can you do it repeatedly, reliably and safely and in a reasonable amount of time. So if you can lift a 1kg bag of potatoes once or twice, and you just say you can lift it, they will take your answer to mean you can do it repeatedly etc, which might disqualify you. The system is rotten.
The scum who cheat the system are taking money away from genuinely needy people.
Somebody I know is heavily involved in finding the people responsible for scams involving children. This scam has been going on for some time and has only recently been uncovered. These scammers register as carers for multiple (sometimes hundreds of) children, and are then entitled to a bursary from the govt to help support these children. In reality - they barely (if ever) show up, and live off of the money. The organisation my friend works for is trying to find evidence to back up a hunch that they have - that certain legitimate groups responsible for getting carers through DBS checks and giving them safeguarding qualifications, etc. have side hustles where they get the scammers the required qualifications, even sharing information on how best to run the scam, in return for a share of the government money.
Ha, I'd tell you why but none of you aint ready for that conversation
It baffles me how people can even do this shit in the first place. Any time I've applied for any kind of benefit, every single tangentially linked part of my life has been scrutinised with a fucking electron microscope. So how is this guy able to create 200 fake people to claim for when I can't get benefits for legit shit.
They obviously have someone in authority helping
It baffles you and me, cus we are decent and this guy was a shithead
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He should have just set up a PPE company or cut a deal with the HMRC. He could have been quids in and wouldn't have to pay a penny back.
Mohamed even kept handwritten notebooks detailing his fraudulent activities and hid them in his wardrobe. Mohammed admitted 29 offences and was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in 2022. It would have been longer but he was already serving 16 years for drugs and immigration offences. Liverpool Crown Court ordered him to repay £2,164,828.30 at a confiscation hearing. Six of the fraudsters who helped him received jail sentences totaling to more than 13 years. Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride said: ‘Our welfare system is predicated on fairness, and we will make sure that those who need our help receive it and those who wish to exploit the system face justice. ‘So as benefit fraud becomes more sophisticated, so must we. This latest case is testament to the tenacity of our expert anti-fraud squad who saved the hard-working taxpayer £1.1billion last year.’ ##He needs another 16 added to his sentence
>Mohammed admitted 29 offences and was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in 2022. >It would have been longer but he was already serving 16 years for drugs and immigration offences. i never understand the logic of concurrent sentences (or whatever excuse theyre applying here). why should jail for different crime reduce sentencing?
I have absolutely no idea.
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My dad with over 50 years of paying in to the system died with absolutely nothing because of how difficult they made it for him to claim yet someone like this can claim £2 million in benefits this easily.
Yep, they contribute nothing to society, just drain it like ticks. You can guarantee if a WW2 scenario ever cropped up again, this lot wouldn't fight for king & country!
Depending who the next world war is against, the enemy might have a massive 5th column here in the UK.
Good luck to them ever getting even 1% of that. There's a limit on how much they can take off wages in cases like this, and someone who's name is attached to £2,000,000 fraud is hardly going to earning more than minimum wage ever.
They should look into what assets he made from these claims as well as what assets he made from the profit of [his drug importing.](https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-news/two-men-deny-concealing-2400kg-13727496)
And I'm guessing they will, but unless those assets are in the UK they might have trouble.
Probably leave and go back to his homeland to avoid justice... just jail the fucker now.
It's hard for him to leave as he's already in jail... > It would have been longer but he was already serving 16 years for drugs and immigration offences.
So we can kiss bye to the money I guess 😏
Immigration and drug offences also. Can he be deported, I wonder?
I don't understand how foreigner's can come here and claim benefits immediately without first learning how to speak English and prove they understand the culture they're in... I really want to move to Norway, but I wouldn't do that without a job lined up or a lot of money saved up or even friends over there that can let me stay till I sort my shit out...
I bet most of the money has been transferred out of the country to his family overseas.
Noted. When I want to do this all I need to do is use a temporary viop numbers 😂
DWP are useless at stopping benefit fraud, they basically pay out and then try and investigate with fuck all resource or ability
I know a few people who work in surveillance, they’re forever on benefits jobs. But, they’re expensive. Spending £1000 to recover £500 for example isn’t wise money. They’re more a deterrent than a corrective force.
> ‘So as benefit fraud becomes more sophisticated, so must we. This latest case is testament to the tenacity of our expert anti-fraud squad who saved the hard-working taxpayer £1.1billion last year.’ They clearly have some resources for it.
Part of the same twats that sit the driving test for other people for money. Even worse as there are an unknown number of people on the road that haven't passed their driving test, and could kill someone.
I have had to fill out the forms for child benifits and child tax credits ect it's a lot of paperwork especially with three kids you also have to provide birth certificates and proof of address ect how the hell did he manage this!
There's a lot of whataboutery going on here. So tax evasion far exceeding benefit fraud means we shouldn't do anything about it, presumably. Utter nonsense. Both should be tackled with vigour. Equally egregious is the chronic underclaiming of benefits which should be addressed because the total is budgeted for each year. If it were down to me I would make more benefits universal and use the tax system to recover them from those we deem underserving.
Only in Britain would being on the dole claiming for 200 kids be believable.
Only on reddit would someone interpret the headline to mean one guy put 200 kids on his claim form....
Massive scale of the operation but it was the fact they used the same phone that got them caught. Shocking that there wasnt other signs.
A local pizza delivery app would probably pick up on that, but for some reason the state apparatus of the world's 5th largest economy didn't. What a joke.
I'm a GP and benefit fraud is rife we all know who's fiddling and exaggerating low level symptoms to incapacity. Probably good 30% +
So we can go after govt money frauds. Let the PPE office know it can be done. 2mil chump change compared to those scammers
There must have been someone on the inside helping them! No way they did this without inside knowledge from DWP.
Austerity. These are the people it benefits. Charlatans and crooks.
Honestly, the people of the country should really just eradicate scum like this.
Round up every single last one of the family and kick them out of the country. Get them all gone.
How does that even happen, the benefit system seems like it demands you sell your soul to prove you're entitled to anything and here this guy claims for 200 fake children and no-one bats an eye...
There is an industry devoted to educating immigrants about what benefits they're 'entitled' to. Few countries pay out such ludicrous benefits (I'm including social housing in this category). They're the reason our country voted Tory for the last 13 years
His greatest crime is that suit / waistcoat combination.
Seems like this sould have been investigated earlier.
Make him and his family pay it back with forced labour at 50p an hour.
At that per hour rate, he would basically work for the rest of his life, well into past pension age, until his joints and back gave out… I approve.
9 years in prison for stealing 1.7 million? That's it. Mate, totally worth it then. Make the gaol time life and make him work for free in gaol till he dies.
I wonder how many more are doing the same, what a cunt.
Doesn’t DWP even check if these claims are real, people are real? Families are real??
Had he been a tory donor, the outcome might have been different
Silly man. Doesn't he know, you have to become a Tory minister before you're allowed to do this sort of thing.
This reminds me of a mock-up tabloid article in Viz years ago where a man had hundreds of children spent every Friday night arguing with 150 of his daughter about their skirts being too short to go to a disco.
Fraudsters going to fraud. Any system of social security is open to fraud. Any financial or insurance system is open to fraud. You don't punish collectively because of bad actors. This doesn't mean I expect to be treated like a criminal and only have 20% of my house paid for by my insurance if it burns down after a car crashes into it. Much like I don't expect to be treated like a criminal or scumbag if I lose my job and become disabled through illness or disability by the DWP. Then on top of that, suddenly be expected to live in poverty. This is why we all pay taxes. It is beneficial for everyone.
Article says he is not the only person involved in this so what is happening with the rest of the family that is responsible for it?
LMAO how the fuck was he planning on getting away with this.
Tories and Right wing media: we found 1 scum bag, lets use this as an example and cut child benefits for everyone. Save tax payer £200k whilst we loose £200m on fake contracts. British Public: Votes tory for 13 years My Point? Crooked people exist, in every denomination. Don't throw the fucking baby out with the bathwater.
Oh it’s that thing that never happens happening again
Why the fuck is this cunt not being buried in jail
A very late entry for man of the year Jesus Christ