Bulgarian UC benefit scammers took at least £50m, possibly £250m per annum, via complex fraud.

You seem surprised! The level of abuse of the UK benefits system by outsiders is staggering.

Still a drop compared to tax avoidance- convenient no one in the government is focusing on that!
HMRC estimates around £400 million in tax was lost in 2020/21 because of avoidance schemes, and a further £800 million was lost in other forms of avoidance behaviour, i.e underreporting income and writing off personal expenses.

If you look at whats been happening with Carers Allowance recently I suggest that this is another example of inadequate 'Gatekeeping' by the DWP.

I understand that during COVID it was a junior Civil Servant who identified that 'several thousand' Universal Credit claims were being paid to the same bank account!

I know from experience that here ae a lot of children on more than one Universal Credit claims

The UC Computer system is basically cobbled together from several different old ones rather than being new.

At the same time you cant reuse the same email address if you reclaim...........

Sigh

Yawn.

That’s ok then… let them off! 🙄

Yep.

It is also no "surprise" it was on green lanes.

Half of wood green are fiddling their claims ( a family member had the misfortune to work for haringey council and it almost caused their brain to explode... they were given a warning for flagging clearly fraudulent activity. No one in the councils cares or wants to know).
more than half the shops on green lanes are deaing coke out of the premises and / or money laundering.
Fruit and veg my arse. Its been going on for decades

I guess the problem is when you have 700000 immigrants a year coming in then it’s relstively easy to lose thousands of pounds spread over several years and thousands of fake claimants. -I dont really believe that but if they can get away with that it must be easy for thousands to scam other benefits/council housing etc and that’s too depressing to think of -and nicely nice Labour are coming into power, bet they do nothing. No wonder the country is skint.

Yes and other countries do things like only fund citizens rather than temporary residents / those on a work permit

Example is Singapore - non-citizens pay for their own healthcare / schooling / library card / museum access / transport etc that for citizens is free / subsidized

£50 million? That's almost half a Baroness Mone. What sentence did she get?

This is why I get absolute rage at our benefits system. There is no logic in it.

Peanuts when compared to billions, or even trillions, Britain looted from virtually every corner of the world.

I still do not understand how can be this much money.

How’s Brexit working for you?

This is why people voted for Brexit. Having open borders just made it too easy for fraudsters.

It’s mind blowing how they got away with it for so long. It’s the injustice of it all. You have to jump through hoops to get help for DLA for your disabled child and then you read this.

How can they want to know the far end of a fart and how many eye lashes DC has, how many shights a day they have and the bludy forms about 40 pages long -evidence needed etc…..yet folk can make people up and claim millions upon millions 🤯

Except it was FRAUD so clearly not entitled.

The issue is why we have insufficient investigation of crime like this.

YEP! This! ^

I bet. Yet the poor family members on carers allowance who unintentionally earn 20p over what their allowance and they’ve got to pay thousands back. It really is sickening

So many IT systems within government departments are hopelessly outdated,
Any decent system would have flagged up multiple claims in the same name if it was a centralised system.

@GoneFishingToday · Today 20:29

When I think of how I had to fight to get the benefits I need to live on, even though I was still making NI contributions, and am severely disabled, this makes me want to print off the article and go and personally shove it up Rishi Sunak's nose! How dare they consider sanctioning us, because we can't actually get into a government building for an assessment, because it's so badly designed, whilst paying literally millions of £ to people who don't even live here, and have never contributed to our country in their lives? Makes my blood boil!😡😡😡

YES! 👏 Saved me typing this.

Absolutely fucking scandalous! 10s of millions being scammed left right and centre because of massive holes in the system, and yet the Government fuss over given people £95 a week for disability benefits that the vast majority of people claiming DO deserve!

JSA still exists for people who are claiming based on their NI contributions and yes, if you don't turn up, you don't get paid. Income based claims are now UC.

Public systems in the UK have so many holes that crooks exploit easily... no ID cards, different government systems are not integrated, no official way to register residence / address...

I have a lawyer friend who works in the dwp investigating cases of fraud. She says even when they discover fraud they hardly ever prosecute or recover the money. Too much red tape to get through apparently🤷🏻‍♀️

This is not ordinary individuals it is an organised crime group which is the main cause of benefit fraud. Let’s not use this as a benefit bashing or immigrant bashing thread.