To think I am being stalked by benefit fraud people?

[Secretnamechange123]

No. I don’t take any recreational drugs, I’m not schizophrenic, I don’t hear voices and I am not being paranoid. Just thought I’d clear that up.

For the last few weeks down my road there’s been a few different cars turn up every morning and stays until later afternoon. The driver almost always stays in the car.

i am a genuine benefits receiver and I need assistance to move, so they won’t catch me wandering the streets, or popping out shopping/gym, unless I have available help, which is possibly once a month. Yes, for a whole month I am stuck inside. They would have seen my meds turn up in a boots pharmacy van, my shopping delivered which is usually time when my neighbours are home to help me. I live alone, I have no support, I don’t know what they are trying to catch? Their car is very unassuming but I live on a street with mine and my neighbours are attached and no more houses for half a mile.

Theyre not stalking my neighbours because they’re not on benefits, so I am guessing it can only mean it’s for me. I don’t have any criminal background, I basically sit in my house for weeks on end, do you think someone is trying to get me into trouble for no reason?

Have you got the Nottingham Knockers at work in your area at the moment?

Quite possible you're correct. Happened years ago to a good friend of mine. She'd been injured at work & while waiting for the insurance claim to go through was claiming benefits. She had both insurance people & DWP following her for weeks ....worked in her favour because she was shown to be significantly more disabled that was initially supposed & ended up with a massive payout because they both had to show all their evidence to her legal team. So yes it does happen.

Something similar happened to me but I was completely unaware of being watched and followed. Most unpleasant actually.

OP, relax. If and it’s a huge if, it’s what you suspect then it’s similar to being watched by a security guard in a shop when you are an innocent shopper. Just go about your business.

Surveillance, if it even is surveillance, isn't only done by DWP. it can be done for insurance companies who suspect fraud, Royal Mail, Police, and many other investigative agencies such as the Environment Agency.

If doesn't necessarily have anything to do with you and your home.

How do you know who they are?

Hard agree!!
Being subtle is last on their list!!
And they do follow people!

The DWP do surveillance but not fit cases like yours. My husbands boss actually worked for the DWP doing that job, he had to wear a stab proof vest for some of his assignments.

Maybe a neighbour suspects their partner of having an affair and has hired a private detective? I’d definitely be asking some questions. Do you have a local Facebook page? You could ask on there, someone else must have noticed

You have absolutely no idea whether your neighbours are on benefits or not.

Report suspicious car activity to the police, they may not be fraud investigators. If they are great, good to know they are trying to catch fraudsters and even better to know that you shouldn’t be worried as a genuine claimant and entitled to your benefits

I’d go out there stand right in front of the windscreen.
take their photo
then tap in the glass and say what are you playing at…

see how they react

then I’d post it on my local fb and say anyone seen this stage person hanging about

even if they are spying on you that should put them off

just what I’d do

Even with clarifying the three things you needlessly did at the start of your post.
how do you even know they’re benefit people? Why are you so paranoid if you’re genuine?

When they do get out the car, where do they go?

For all you know, your neighbour’s estranged brother has escaped from prison and they’re watching to see if he shows up there. Your neighbour might have no idea because they stopped speaking years ago… It could be pretty much anything!

Years ago, I had a job audio-typing fraud investigation tapes for the DWP... There were quite a few cases where investigations (costing £1000s) were launched for trivial amounts. There was one case where the amount claimed either by error/ fraud was £5. The cost of the interview under caution, and paying an outsourced company to professional type up the interview tapes far exceeded the amount involved.

This happened on our street, for more than a week a car with 2 people in it was parked. Our street is very quiet, no through road.
A neighbour actually phoned the police and were told they would look into it.
It turned out to be undercover, not very good, police watching a house up the street to do with drugs.

Yes, they’re very obviously watching you from what you’re saying

but you’ve done nothing wrong so try not to worry

It would be very easy to spot an unknown car parked up for weeks in a rural area. I live in a suburban street and still manage to spot an unknow car especially if it's been parked for any length of time.

Scumbags moved into the house next door and into the house across the road and caused a lot of trouble. Three of my neighbours and myself very quickly started taking note of all cars that called to them, date, time, description of callers, any anti-social behaviour of which there was plenty after we copped they were drug dealing. We regularly reported what we saw to the gardai. We spotted the unmarked garda car parked up the road a couple of times and then one day there was an armed raid on the house across the road and drugs were found.

The four of us had a meeting with the drugs unit in the main garda station and the detectives and gardai were very impressed and delighted when we each pulled out sheets of information we'd noted. They were delighted to see that every Thursday around 11am a drug dealer from another city would drop off drugs for the shower next door to deal over the weekend.

The valley of the squinting windows is very much alive. 😂

Get someone to ask them directly what they’re doing if it bothers you so much.

If you have security clearance or a neighbour does, and there's been a recent house move or new partner, could be associated with that. I had them outside my new house for a week until I very pointedly went out, wrote down the reg and then got onto the company folks who deal with this and asked if I should offer their person a cup of tea and bacon roll?
As others have said, @Secretnamechange123 if you've nothing to worry about, even if you are being surveilled, just go about your business.

I do home visits for my job and never quite know how long they are going to take so if I have a few in the same area I can often end up with an hour or so to kill and sometimes have to just park up on a residential street if there's no supermarket or library car park to go to ! I'm obviously not in the same place often though !

They do, it happened to me once, years ago. I knew who they were, I just had a feeling. I wasn't being paranoid - I was called in to answer questions afterwards, but I was genuine and had nothing to hide and all was fine.

Noise nuisance ( dog barking etc. ) someone could have complained re noise and the Council is sending an officer to try and witness a ' nuisance '.

I once looked into the cost of surveillance when I was being stalked. It was astronomical and I could not have afforded more than a few days let alone weeks. I dont believe this has anything to do with benefit fraud people and there is some other explanation. Probably a police operation of some kind. Serious crime or drugs. I would be getting my relative to send one of his big biker mates to find out what he was doing and spoil his little game. But then I can be a bitch.

How do you know it has anything to do with benefits?