To ask if you've ever reported somebody for benefit fraud

[Fragmentedbrain]

And if the DWP subsequently came for them

turning communities against each other by rewarding snitching and curtain twitching is going to do diddly-squat to reduce the benefits bill, it will raise a tiny miniscule fraction of the savings needed. It is not the answer. And it will cause human suffering and anxiety to many, which will keep people like the OP happy who starts these goady threads time after time.

I can see you don't understand what you've read either in my post or this source.

I said benefit fraud is already dealt with pretty effectively.

Clearly the government knows about this fraud you are dIrecting me to read about - that's how they are able to write down the number IN A GOVERNMENT REPORT. As I said - much benefit fraud is known about already, which is not the case with tax fraud.

So it would be really silly to pay people to report something that's already known, a total waste of money. Plusbit would lead to wider social problems that would damage our society, because arseholes would report lots of people speculatively, which would cost a lot to investigate and cause tension between people.

No,

turning communities against each other by rewarding snitching and curtain twitching is going to do diddly-squat to reduce the benefits bill

They same could be said for ‘Oh well what about tax invasion’

2 wrongs don’t make a right.

Either you claim and be truthful, or you work.

Living off benefits is no life, some get far more support than others.

Honestly, the amount of men who do not play fair with their child support - should be held accountable - is that counted as ‘fraud’ ? It seems to me if men don’t pay, they are just put on a plan.

Yet woman over claiming to keep their kids in good and school uniforms are being vilified.

No and l never would .

How do you know the government knows about the majority of benefit fraud and it's already being dealt with effectively? On this thread alone there are loads of examples of people that are committing fraud and will possibly never be found out. A lot of fraud can't be identified easily using data matching and would be extremely difficult to detect without using some pretty extreme surveillance.

For example, the woman claiming PIP claiming she can't walk when she can. This would require either surveillance teams to track her or someone to report her. The DWP believes that PIP fraud is ridiculously low and yet you will often see on MN that most people know someone that is claiming disability benefit in a questionable way. Nobody knows the ins and outs of other people's lives but people do know a lot about friends and family and benefit fraud is pretty often much more obvious to those nearest and dearest to people than the government.

Same goes with someone claiming to be single when they have a partner would only be picked up if they got sloppy financially and there was an audit trail or if someone reported them. Neighbours, family and friends will see the partner entering an leaving the house and chat to the kids who talk about family house and how daddy is obviously living there FT.

My point is benefit fraud is absolutely astronomical. The figure you quote could will be the tip of the iceberg and nobody including the government has any idea about the real extent of it. It is a complete red herring to redirect everyone to tax avoidance/evasion when of course that should be dealt with as well.

Yes I have.
A person I know very well and so am 100% sure of my facts.

Despite living a luxury lifestyle in a beautiful country house looking after her horses and competing at show jumping this woman claims highest level PIP and ESA by pretending she has CFS and fibromylagia.

I have seen her climbing gates, mucking out her horses, carrying bales of hay, walking her dogs for miles and driving the horses off to shows where she mostly wins the jumping classes she enters.

She then gets out the crutches she carries in car (but never normally uses) when she goes to the doctor or dwp assessments and she cries and asks for a bed to lie down on whilst she waits because she is in too much pain to sit on a chair.

Her wealthy partner pays all the household bills. Her PIP is just used to keep her horses.

The vast majority of people claiming disability benefits are genuine.
This woman is insulting them and smearing the reputation of disabled people with her behaviour.

The amount of fraud in many benefits is very low. On a thread like this people that suspect someone they know is claiming fraudulently is going to post. All those people who know people who claim legitimately won't post. I don't have an issue with people reporting possible fraud but it isn't endemic.

In Ireland but a boss in a place I worked in once did, the irony- she was one of the most unpleasant people I knew and was on a huge salary and reported a neighbour because she felt she was claiming disability wrongly- turned out the neighbour had an awful disease. My boss wasn’t at all apologetic and her and some of her colleagues even laughed about it. I made a face and she said ‘what?!’ And rolled her eyes and then went on about her business

BIL/SIL were on the fiddle for a while. Back in the time of family tax credits.
BIL was self employed and only putting a minimum amount through the books, when he was in fact earning a small fortune. He was so pleased with himself not paying any tax. SIL was then claiming FTC and didn’t go back to work after maternity as it wasn’t worth it compared to the benefits she was wrongly getting.
They only stopped because BILs accountant wouldn’t do his accounts anymore.
SIL had lost her job and the impetus to work in those years. She then spent all her time trying to get money out of her/my MIL who earned Minimum wage. Wish I had reported them.

Exactly this. A thousand times.

Well I can't see a lot of difference between benefit fraud and rich folks fiddling expenses or hiring accountants to make sure they pay as little tax as possible.
No I've never reported anyone.

You still get housing benefit for certain kinds of supported accommodation. It depends on the nature of the support, which can be just enhanced housing management.

I'm a welfare rights officer working for a housing association, around 50% of our tenants are in accommodation that is exempt from UC housing costs and tenants still get HB instead of the housing costs element of UC.

In general I would absolutely wind my neck in and keep my own counsel. I will in this case too but what has got me wondering is that the person claims they're also accessing a number of other resources (limited ones that other people will therefore be denied) as a result of their successful and fraudulent UC claim.

They are taking stuff genuinely needy people will go without. I would say they are wealthy, not just ordinary and creaming off a bit of extra.

I used to work for DSS, in a grotty part of London where I'd grown up so I knew a lot of people. We had a fraud officer (a lovely guy, ex-policeman). He got a lot of anonymous letters - IDK how many but maybe four or five a week? He would follow them up. Often I didn't say anything if I knew eg. someone was working on the side, but I did report someone to him but I can't remember if I found out what happened. Often people said they'd "forgotten to update their details" and they got a slapped wrist but at least they stopped claiming and hopefully it taught them a lesson and it saved the taxpayers' money going forward.

I think it's worth reporting, and then it's out of your hands. It's fraud. It's defrauding us all of money that could be spent elsewhere. There are rules about eg. how often boyfriends can stay over before they are deemed to be supporting a partner. It might seem like Big Brother but it's public money, and that's the price of claiming!

How do you know that the fraud rate with benefits is low? The DWP doesn't even know this let alone you. It is a very difficult issue to even begin to estimate due to the nature of the problem. Not many people committing fraud are going to be open with authorities or even independent researchers compiling stats. They know the potential penalities will be huge and it could even bring about a criminal conviction. People aren't stupid!

People though are much more likely to be open with friends and family. It is the nature of the beast. It is much harder to conceal a partner living with you or to fake an illness or disability 24/7 around people you're seeing all the time.

I am by no means suggesting that most people are fraudulently claiming benefits but just that it's completely misleading to pretend this isn't happening at a pretty large scale in this country. Some people I suspect don't even think they're committing fraud as they operate in a perceived moral grey area. They exaggerate claims or think certain things don't count even though the rules are clear that they do.

I don't think that we are going to agree. There have been reputable studies that have shown that for PIP for example the rate of fraud is very low. However the government do take benefit fraud seriously and have put a considerable amount of money into combating this particularly in relation to Universal Credit where the level of error and fraud is higher. They are also putting in place a series of measure for example working with financial institutions to combat this.

No, but I damn well would if I knew someone was committing benefit fraud and would take some pleasure from it. The bleeding heart types in their echo chambers say we should mind our own business, but benefit fraud is everybody’s business.

I’m hoping that the advancement of AI will enable the government to detect more and more of what these low lives do, e.g like this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqjyedz202ko.amp

Is she thinking of carers allowance?

I haven't, but I've been falsely reported by neighbours, they told me they were reporting me and what for.
Of course because I wasn't claiming from the DWP but TC, and they investigated (had to just confirm what they already knew with proof) absolutely nothing happened.

So I assume because these neighbours 'knew' what they knew and reported me, but nothing happened they would be privvy to or could actually see, they would have put it in the 'Nothing got done box' rather than the 'No fraud happening and we were wrong' box.

Please link any peer reviewed studies that have utilised a methodology that would accurately assess fraud rate when it comes to PIP. How do they reliably identify fraudulent claims when the claimant hasn't left an evidence trail on social media etc. Most people aren't stupid enough to do that! Certain elements of Universal Credit fraud is easier to identify with data matching.

The fact remains that a lot of fraud can't be proven through financial records but only through in-depth surveillance. The government will never fund this and it wouldn't be ethical. For this reason we will never know the true extent of the fraud. You may believe it is ridiculously low but I would bet a hell of a lot of money that it is a LOT higher than the DWP figures in some areas.

I used to work with someone whose husband was a cash-in-hand builder. Always had been so had never paid tax.
They owned their own house, her mum's house and a 6 bed villa in Portugal.
The villa was rented out through a Portuguese company so all the money went into a bank account out there.

They paid bugger all tax. Im far angrier at people like that than people who dont mention that they've got their sister in the spare room or whatever crime most benefit claimants get into. As a PP said, they have usually drifted into fraud. This was quite deliberate.

Made worse by the fact that the wife (my colleague) was in a public sector role so her wages were paid from the tax receipts that her husband refused to contribute to.

No, I didn't shop them. I was a lot younger then.

I'm on the verge with my neighbour

She moved in next door with her two (almost adult) dds a few years ago and they proudly claim 'every disabled benefit going' (her words)

(She got a place in a woman's refuge while claiming dv against her bloke which was utter bollocks-she proudly told a friend of mine she did it to speed up getting another council house as she was thrown out of the one they had-i have no idea how this works)

She's has made our lives hell (openly admitting she wants us to move and she'll be the in to force us out-we own our house so she doesn't have a chance)

Within 6 weeks she'd moved her 'brother' (the dds call him dad) in and hasn't told the benefits office

She stands on my doorstep just one more time to scream at me 'to fucking move out!i want you out!' while threatening to punch us and they are getting a phone call

We are quiet neighbours who keep ourselves to ourselves and don't cause trouble for anyone

I take it you also would report anyone for minor benefit fraud. We can’t rule for the posh and the elite and another for Karen from the estate now can we. What’s right and moral for the goose is right and moral for the gander