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

[Papyrophile]

There's a trial happening in north London right now, with five Bulgarians in the dock for organising the largest benefit fraud operation ever in the UK. It was detected by the Bulgarian police. Where were the UK authorities during this? Asleep?

A link to the Telegraph, but paywalled, so good luck accessing it. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/28/bulgarian-town-boomed-from-uks-biggest-benefits-fraud/

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

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.

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

That’s ok then… let them off! 🙄

Yawn.

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

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.

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

Yes, the incompetence is staggering isn’t it?

They also have National service in Singapore, so maybe the Tories are moving towards a Singapore plan! We will never know, as it’s unlikely they will win the election.

This is what I didn’t get. It said some of the people turned up once to get the benefits but others didn’t even enter the U.K.
Years ago I claimed job seekers for a few months and I had to turn up every two weeks in person. What happens now ?! Just apply online?

Firstly, this is on the scammers. However, the system doesn’t sound robust enough and there aren’t enough staff at DWP, not enough Police, prosecutors etc. Everything is so badly managed.

PP mentioned Mone and her millions? What IS happening about that?

no they can't! do people really believe this???

RTFT, I meant EU citizens could.

What a pathetic country we are now.

This is why we need ID cards with a thumb print. No ID card=no benefits

That's not what you said it it worked thf other way round in the past too to the benefit of Brits. But news alert, we left the EU and it hasn't been possible for years

That is not true re JSA , when i claimed for a month last year and rang them i need to change my sign on date as i will be away for 5 days they immediately closed my claim, they said i can't leave the country when claiming JSA

JSA is a different benefit to UC. UC can be claimed with no contact or attendance in person for years. JSA, you're there every fortnight so it's harder to scam.

That’s why I said RTFT as I already corrected my mistake!

Nah it definitely wasn’t like for like or even anywhere close. Some EU countries benefited far more than others….

Thank god there has been a stop to it now. Clearly half the population wanted it to stop.

Most other European countries have a contributory welfare and health system with id cards so much harder to commit benefits fraud and health tourism. One of the reasons why Britain is a target for fraudsters is because much easier to go undetected and even if found out civil servant lawyer friend says few Civil servants want to take cases further due to said red tape especially if fraudsters are foreign as they don’t want to be accused of being bigots and racists

We seem to get a monthly commitment thing to agree to every month. I am not sure but they do look at plane tickets etc to see if anyone is out of the country more than 28 days.

Rubbish, the fraud carried on after we left the EU.... EU citizens could only ever claim what a UK citizen could, there was never an EU only benefits system.
As a council official once told me "the law is only there for those who wish to obey it"

Do we ever read about brits defrauding the French or German benefits systems? nope.

UK once again blaming the EU for the lack of UK accountability.

And healthcare tourism, people arriving with complex health issues who go on to spend months and months in our hospitals all at our expense.

Lol You think Benefit fraud has stopped???? EU citizens can still come to the UK for 6 months, unchecked and the issue of NI numbers is still on going.... the black economy is booming.

...and thats before we get onto UK citizens.

Another mistake you might wish to correct.... 1/2 the population? you really mean less than 35% of the electorate.