My daughter is under investigation for fraud with universal credit. Can anyone help?

[Est1974]

My daughter went to uni last year, realised it wasn’t the right course and dropped out by the end of October to reapply for this year. I’d paid into a child trust fund her whole life that she closed to pay her living expenses to top up the loan - about 7.5k in total. She signed on when she got back and started looking for work. She declared the money appropriately and her uc was trimmed in line with it being over 6k. She got a couple of uc payments. She then got a Christmas shop job that lasted 6 weeks. Uc stopped during this period. I charged a little bit for food but she saved the rest and declared it properly each month. She applied for hundreds of jobs but didn’t get one until the May. She lived like a hermit, saved the uc and declared it every month as her savings went up. The May to September job paid really well and she saved almost all of it. She got no uc during either of the periods of paid employment. She was awarded two scholarships for women in engineering for her new university course. She is now in the new uni with a little war chest of nearly 18k.

Universal Credit are now gunning for her and want 12 months worth of bank statements and are accusing her of fraud. She got no money while she was working and at the time she got the second job she’d only amassed about 8k - well under the 16k limit which she declared properly at every stage and the uc she received between January and may went down accordingly as she saved it. The jump from 8-14 was during her summer job during which she wasn’t claiming and the other 4k is from the women in engineering scholarships. She wasn’t claiming while she got these earnings.

Shes on her own at uni in her first week, full of freshers flu and petrified. What will happen?

Jeez, don't use Chat GPT to calm you down! It's programmed to be reassuring even when it has no reason to!

Just use your own brain. Have I done anything wrong? No. Then it will be OK. You don't need a randomised chatbot to tell you this

A good life lesson it seems- just reassure her that the best course of action is to provide what they have requested and be honest.

She sounds like a great lass! All she can do is given them all the evidence and pay anything owed.

@Est1974
pop over to the benefits and advice subs on Reddit
they have actual DWP advisors as mods on there and they are very helpful

UC want to see when she got any money

it’s very standard

worse case she owes them some money and And a 50 admin fine

I am also wondering if the letter is from fraud investigation or if it is their usual quite scarily worded review letter? With a lot of benefits even th Christmas £10 can come with some scary wording. My elderly relative always panics and I can understand why it panics some people.

However once she provides them with the statements and has the conversation they are usually quite nice.
Expect the conversation to possibly be repetitive e.g. "which payment is your rent?" The payment to Mrs Jones. "What is the payment to Mrs Jones for?"

It sounds like she's done everything right but even if you haven't they are quite nice assuming it's a genuine error.

Did she receive the maintenance loan for the first term? I think if she received and kept the maintenance loan for the first term, I believe that UC may count it as income rather than savings. They divide the maximum student loan amount she was eligible for by 52 to calculate it as weekly income. I assume the would pro rata it just for the first term period though.

If so, doubt they will do anything other than ask her to pay it back as she (presumably) did declare the money but as savings rather than income, albeit she declared it incorrectly.

That’s ridiculous … she’s done nothing wrong!

Sounds like your daughter has done everything right but I would still get some advice, legal or otherwise.

DWP chased me for 11 years for mistakes they made but it was up to me to prove they were wrong. I did that but it was stressful and exhausting. I didn’t have to pay anything back. Put absolutely everything in writing, no phone calls, the recordings get conveniently lost, and keep copies. Don’t let them bully you, the tone of their letters is very unsettling.

Good luck, don’t agree to any payment plans either as it seems to be seen as an admission of guilt.

You really don't, an accountant maybe if the HMRC become unhelpful.
I've been through this with my Dad, HMRC are next to useless, it will possibly take several phone calls/ emails and letters sent by recorded delivery to get through to them to deal with this issue for the OP's daughter. She may be lucky and get an employee who cares and is quick to deal with it.
Providing the daughter has records/receipts/statements she will be fine.

Thing is we cant have it all ways. We want fraudulent claims and expensive mistakes picking up because we foot the bill for benefits. That means DWP have to ask questions even of innocent people. The amount of money lost in fraud and error each year is staggering.Even genuine errors are costly.

So, OP, this isnt your daughter being hounded. She’s being asked to provide evidence and once it’s cleared up that will be that.

The uni should have a wellbeing service. She could talk to them either for financial advice or just a bit of support.

When I dropped out of uni, many years ago, I was told that because I’d received the maintenance loan I wasn’t entitled to benefits as that’s double dipping and I had to wait until the end of the academic year before I claimed, by which time I had a job.

I’ve no idea if that’s still the case but might be the same principle. I think at worst she’ll be asked to pay what she received back, but it might not come to anything.

Are you sure it is the fraud department as it sounds more like a regular UC review team request?

No she doesn’t. She just needs to show the statements like they’ve asked. No fraud means it’ll be cleared up pretty fast.

In the meantime I hope your daughter can relax in the knowledge that if she hasn’t done anything wrong then there is no case for her to answer and she will have it cleared pretty quickly.

If they’ve set a deadline on sending docs she may also be able to do it sooner, it happened to my friend when her ex arsehole decided to play games and fake report her.

If they’ve just sent her a couple of letters, they are not treating it as fraud. The Enhanced Review Team are ‘pre fraud’, and they don’t send letters, they call and make appointments. If they really thought it was fraud, there’d be an interview under caution.

Sounds far more like a claim review, https://www.turn2us.org.uk/get-support/information-for-your-situation/managing-your-universal-credit-claim/automated-claimant-reviews

If there is some information that we are not aware of and they are treating as fraud then the CA website has advice https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/benefits/benefits-introduction/problems-with-benefits-and-tax-credits/if-youve-been-invited-to-an-interview-under-caution-for-benefit-fraud/

To all the people who have commented on my first comment and not read my reasoning for why… please do so 🙄

These letters are designed to frighten and intimidate claimants into stopping claiming and paying back chunks of money regardless of whether they have committed fraud. Lots of ordinary people will repay the money through fear rather than because they have done anything wrong.

It’s really important that your daughter finds a good advocate who understands benefit law and can go through everything with a fine tooth comb and draft a suitable response.

Suggest she visits the Student Union and see if they have a dedicated Student Money adviser. They should be able to assess the situation and point her in the direction of a competent specialist adviser. Some Uni’s also have law students running advice sessions who will help navigate the issue, advise and help draft letters.

I know nothing about this and just googled and found the same. Do you know if she declared the loan properly OP?

The DWP seem to use the word "fraud" when they can't get their heads round the fact that some people's finances are less than straightforward.

If I had £1 for every client that had rung in a panic because they'd had a letter with the word "fraud" in it asking for financial info, I'd be bloody loaded. It sometimes seems that they suspect anyone who's finances are anything other than wages in/spending out is on the fiddle.

As long as she's reported everything properly, she's got nothing to worry about. The worst that's likely to happen is that she might have been overpaid a bit of UC because of the timelag between them getting info and processing it.

It sounds as if she did not need UC as all of it was saved. And they will probably want to know how that was possible. But if she has followed their rules on employment and savings then she won't be in any trouble. I agree there are no accusations of fraud at the moment but they want more evidence of her financial affairs to back up her claims.

Your second post says "it's always sensible to get legal advice" and "£100 with an expert to calm her down is immeasurable if it helps her... not to worry."

This is nonsense.

It's not always sensible to get legal advice, and especially to pay a hundred quid for it.

If she is smart enough to get to university and is diligent enough to report all her financial transactions as the OP has listed, she has no need for a lawyer to pay a lawyer to tell her everything is OK.

Legally, the same money cannot be counted as both income and capital at the same time.When your monthly income is paid into your bank account, it is treated as income for that specific assessment period. Any money left over from that income at the start of the next assessment period then converts into capital.

If your bank balance temporarily spikes above the allowed limit (for example, the £6,000 threshold where benefits start to reduce, or the £16,000 cutoff limit) purely because your monthly wages or a benefit payment just landed, you have not necessarily broken the rules. The authorities look at your baseline capital after deducting that month's living costs and income. However, if your savings naturally build up and remain over the limit once the next month begins, you must report it, as it will then officially count as capital.

Are they actually accusing her of fraud or are they just doing a review which is absolutely normal?

Im sorry, its not nonsense. It is always smart to get legal advice, this girl has a lot of money, and I think an actual lawyer telling her not to worry is going to be far more reassuring than ‘I didn’t do anything wrong’ when you’re young and you have anxiety.

But they havent accused her of fraud.
Don't in law had a bank statement showing £13k going in and out. Flags raised. He had sold his car and used the proceeds to pay off the loan on the basis that he couldn't afford it.
All sorted with his explanation