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Post by Red Rackham on Dec 30, 2023 23:35:07 GMT
Sub heading: Only in politically correct minority appeasing UK. Ali Bana Mohamed [Hands up anyone who'd surprised] was jailed in 2022 for masterminding a decade-long scam. He enlisted relatives and friends to assist him in submitting bogus claims under about 70 different names, using stolen identities of adults along with the fake birth certificates of 188 children. The DWP launched a probe and investigators discovered that Mohamed and six others were behind the fraud. Mohamed admitted 29 fraud offences and was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in 2022. It would have been longer had he not already been serving 16 years for drugs and immigration offences - link
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Post by seniorcitizen007 on Dec 31, 2023 7:29:58 GMT
In the 70s, during my squatting days, I lived with a woman who was separated from her husband. She had a two year old son. Shortly after I took up with her her husband turned up. He'd been fund raising for the IRA in America. He told me not to claim benefits and provided us with considerably more than if we had have done. He claimed for her ... and six children ... and passed the money onto us.
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Post by steppenwolf on Dec 31, 2023 8:57:27 GMT
The problem is that the DWP rarely conduct investigations (except by phone using a standard questionnaire). Unlike HMRC who conduct frequent investigations both targeted and random. The govt is always keen to cut tax evasion (especially by the rich) but it seems to be against the Leftie civil servants principles to try to catch benefit fraud. They don't like to be seen as persecuting benefit claimants, yet it's pretty obvious that benefit fraud is rife - especially among certain groups.
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Post by johnofgwent on Dec 31, 2023 23:44:18 GMT
All i am going to say is he clearly didn’t try claiming universal credit in the south west of england. My youngest and hervteam would have winkled him out in a blink of an eyelid.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 1, 2024 1:06:50 GMT
The problem is that the DWP rarely conduct investigations (except by phone using a standard questionnaire). Unlike HMRC who conduct frequent investigations both targeted and random. The govt is always keen to cut tax evasion (especially by the rich) but it seems to be against the Leftie civil servants principles to try to catch benefit fraud. They don't like to be seen as persecuting benefit claimants, yet it's pretty obvious that benefit fraud is rife - especially among certain groups. The full facts can be found here.... fullfact.org/online/hmrc-tax-fraud-dwp-benefit-fraud/Whilst the figures have been wildly wrong in the past where claims to the contrary have been made, the Inland Revenue employs more people to investigate tax evasion than the DWP employs to investigate benefit fraud, though this is not unreasonable considering more is lost via tax evasion than via benefit fraud, and a substantial part of the latter appears to be errors by the DWP itself, with many of the overpayments later being clawed back. But your notion that the authorities are particularly keen to target the rich is not born out, because only a small fraction of tax investigators working in the field are targeting high net worth individuals. Far more effort is put into investigating more ordinary people. But high net worth tax fraud is always going to be well worth going after simply because the sums being lost per fraudster are likely to be so much larger. The kind of example in the OP is organised criminal activity and comparatively rare, and such people are always likely to be caught sooner or later. Most benefit fraud involves lower level fraudulent activity by individuals, eg falsely claiming to be ill when they are not, claiming separately whilst actually being a cohabiting couple, taking in a lodger for cash in hand rent and not declaring it, claiming housing benefit whilst living elsewhere and letting it out, working cash in hand and not declaring it. All these things are typical fraudulent acts by mostly lone people chancing their arm and not really an organised criminal enterprises at all. Of course it is still illegal and fraudulent and needs to be investigated, and such investigations probably deter others from trying their luck too. But it simply is not true that fraudulent rich people are being disproportionately hammered whilst everyone else's fraud is being treated lightly. Of all the thousands employed to investigate both benefit fraud and tax evasion, only a few hundred are going after high net worth individuals, even though the sums involved per criminal are likely in most cases to be far higher. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 1, 2024 1:09:38 GMT
All i am going to say is he clearly didn’t try claiming universal credit in the south west of england. My youngest and hervteam would have winkled him out in a blink of an eyelid. My Latvian friend works for the DWP here in the SW of England too, dealing with Universal Credit claims. She is highly intelligent and nobody's fool. Few fraudsters are ever likely to get past her. And by all accounts a fair few of those who attempt welfare fraud are so utterly thick oftentimes that those working in the field can spot them a mile off. Successful fraud requires knowledge and planning employing intelligence. Quite a few are not up to that. With high net worth individuals however, in most cases they are unlikely to be so well off without making a lot of intelligent decisions to get there. There will not be very many thick high net worth individuals, and so when these seek to evade taxes they are likely to be both clever and knowledgeable about it, and thus harder to catch. |
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Post by johnofgwent on Jan 1, 2024 2:29:00 GMT
The thing is a LARGE number of problems arise from official fuckups. Gordon Brown made tax credits so complex his own staff fucked up snd i was on the receiving end of that thanks to my non employment while waiting for the first cataract op snd i utterly crucified the bastards.
Sarah and the entire street were put in blind panic and got themselves into serious debt snd hell when UC fuckups caused IN WORK housing benefit screwups that saw everyone in the street sent an eviction notice. I got an independent councillor in the next ward to kick some arses, he didn't have to, but he remembered sarah from the murder on his patch and me from when he was my councillor ages before and was delighted to kick arses if labour twats who threw him off the party whip… In the end the council admitted their total fuckup but that took months
The whole business is a disaster and too often councils refuse to make it clear innocents have been wrongly smeared, this of course leads to issues tike this one being reduced un importance
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Post by steppenwolf on Jan 1, 2024 8:42:33 GMT
The problem is that the DWP rarely conduct investigations (except by phone using a standard questionnaire). Unlike HMRC who conduct frequent investigations both targeted and random. The govt is always keen to cut tax evasion (especially by the rich) but it seems to be against the Leftie civil servants principles to try to catch benefit fraud. They don't like to be seen as persecuting benefit claimants, yet it's pretty obvious that benefit fraud is rife - especially among certain groups. The full facts can be found here.... fullfact.org/online/hmrc-tax-fraud-dwp-benefit-fraud/Whilst the figures have been wildly wrong in the past where claims to the contrary have been made, the Inland Revenue employs more people to investigate tax evasion than the DWP employs to investigate benefit fraud, though this is not unreasonable considering more is lost via tax evasion than via benefit fraud, and a substantial part of the latter appears to be errors by the DWP itself, with many of the overpayments later being clawed back. But your notion that the authorities are particularly keen to target the rich is not born out, because only a small fraction of tax investigators working in the field are targeting high net worth individuals. Far more effort is put into investigating more ordinary people. But high net worth tax fraud is always going to be well worth going after simply because the sums being lost per fraudster are likely to be so much larger. The kind of example in the OP is organised criminal activity and comparatively rare, and such people are always likely to be caught sooner or later. Most benefit fraud involves lower level fraudulent activity by individuals, eg falsely claiming to be ill when they are not, claiming separately whilst actually being a cohabiting couple, taking in a lodger for cash in hand rent and not declaring it, claiming housing benefit whilst living elsewhere and letting it out, working cash in hand and not declaring it. All these things are typical fraudulent acts by mostly lone people chancing their arm and not really an organised criminal enterprises at all. Of course it is still illegal and fraudulent and needs to be investigated, and such investigations probably deter others from trying their luck too. But it simply is not true that fraudulent rich people are being disproportionately hammered whilst everyone else's fraud is being treated lightly. Of all the thousands employed to investigate both benefit fraud and tax evasion, only a few hundred are going after high net worth individuals, even though the sums involved per criminal are likely in most cases to be far higher. Did you read that link? No. The only way that you can find out the level of fraud is to carry out random checks - which HMRC do. They pick people at random and do an in depth investigation of their affairs and take away documents and computers. It's very intrusive and costs people a lot of money because they usually have to employ accountants to answer all the questions. I know people who have been investigated by HMRC (they don't tell you if it's targeted or random) and it's a nightmare. The DWP do NOT do this. Their investigations are conducted by phone and are light touch. Many of these fraud cases are the type of thing that could easily be detected by visiting the people who are making claims and seeing if they live where they claim and if they actually have the number of children they claim etc. But the DWP don't do this. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 1, 2024 11:00:39 GMT
The full facts can be found here.... fullfact.org/online/hmrc-tax-fraud-dwp-benefit-fraud/Whilst the figures have been wildly wrong in the past where claims to the contrary have been made, the Inland Revenue employs more people to investigate tax evasion than the DWP employs to investigate benefit fraud, though this is not unreasonable considering more is lost via tax evasion than via benefit fraud, and a substantial part of the latter appears to be errors by the DWP itself, with many of the overpayments later being clawed back. But your notion that the authorities are particularly keen to target the rich is not born out, because only a small fraction of tax investigators working in the field are targeting high net worth individuals. Far more effort is put into investigating more ordinary people. But high net worth tax fraud is always going to be well worth going after simply because the sums being lost per fraudster are likely to be so much larger. The kind of example in the OP is organised criminal activity and comparatively rare, and such people are always likely to be caught sooner or later. Most benefit fraud involves lower level fraudulent activity by individuals, eg falsely claiming to be ill when they are not, claiming separately whilst actually being a cohabiting couple, taking in a lodger for cash in hand rent and not declaring it, claiming housing benefit whilst living elsewhere and letting it out, working cash in hand and not declaring it. All these things are typical fraudulent acts by mostly lone people chancing their arm and not really an organised criminal enterprises at all. Of course it is still illegal and fraudulent and needs to be investigated, and such investigations probably deter others from trying their luck too. But it simply is not true that fraudulent rich people are being disproportionately hammered whilst everyone else's fraud is being treated lightly. Of all the thousands employed to investigate both benefit fraud and tax evasion, only a few hundred are going after high net worth individuals, even though the sums involved per criminal are likely in most cases to be far higher. Did you read that link? No. The only way that you can find out the level of fraud is to carry out random checks - which HMRC do. They pick people at random and do an in depth investigation of their affairs and take away documents and computers. It's very intrusive and costs people a lot of money because they usually have to employ accountants to answer all the questions. I know people who have been investigated by HMRC (they don't tell you if it's targeted or random) and it's a nightmare. The DWP do NOT do this. Their investigations are conducted by phone and are light touch. Many of these fraud cases are the type of thing that could easily be detected by visiting the people who are making claims and seeing if they live where they claim and if they actually have the number of children they claim etc. But the DWP don't do this. I agree that that level of intrusiveness should never be done at random. Like the police they should have to have reasonable grounds for suspicion and a warrant to take away their property and documents. Though the right to view their bank accounts should be reasonable enough if it is also being done to welfare claimants. But as many welfare fraudsters are not all that smart, quite a lot of welfare fraud is detectable without visiting or following people. The latter does happen though contrary to your claims. I have seen them in action. Once upon a time I was earning some extra cash during a week off work by picking potatoes on a nearby farm, when suddenly the field was raided by welfare fraud investigators taking down people's number plates as they sped off. Since I was not claiming welfare they were not interested in me. Another person I knew of who had worked cash in hand occasionally whilst on benefits, spent a week being followed by them wherever he drove. I myself once reported someone for working whilst claiming out of work benefits. I know that they checked out her workplace in person because I heard about it. |
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