OK, so the Brit govt is bad at handing out free money:
He said that most of the claimants “lived in Bulgaria and made claims in which they falsely claimed that they lived and worked here when they did not”.
He added: “Many travelled here for a short period of time to support the claim before returning to Bulgaria with the claim remaining ongoing. Some never even travelled here.”
The main architects of the fraud were, the court heard, Ali and Nikolova.
The gang would begin by finding “customers” in Bulgaria whose personal details they could use to fraudulently pretend they were living and working in the UK.
They would then produce an array of forged documents, including fictitious tenancy agreements, counterfeit payslips, and forged letters from landlords, employers and GPs.
At which point, in goes the Universal Credit claim.
Erm, weren’t we told that migrants were not eligible for public benefits?
Speaking exclusively to The Telegraph from the rundown offices of the organised crime division in Sliven before the sentencing, 47-year-old Mr Panayotov said he believed the gang had been making up to £200 million a year.
Once the benefits were approved, Mr Panaytov claimed the “customers” had to pay a one-off commission of between £500 and £800, after which they would receive on average between £2,000 and £2,500 a month.
Errm yes.
The officer said that the majority of the customers, and commissioners, were from the Roma minority community.
Cliche after cliche, no?
Just read this story. Astonishing. Shocked but not surprised.
Obviously the fraudsters were bribing the wrong coppers.
At least if they aren’t living here then they aren’t stabbing and raping and intimidating people in this country.
And let’s be grateful that the Bulgarian police are more effective than our own.
And what’s the point of “Universal Credit” if we restrict it to our own failures and scammers?
“And what’s the point of “Universal Credit” if we restrict it to our own failures and scammers?”
I have a wife and 20,000 spawnlings to feed on Alpha Centauri Prime. The council evicted me because the star was going to go supernova.
I wonder who these people are, who failed to check, or double check, these applications? A phone call or two, to the ‘doctors’, ‘landlords’, or ’employers’ would have revealed some, if not all, of these bogus applications. Despite the derisory custodial sentence which will be meted out to those found guilty, the fact is, that this money has gone, and no one working in the uncivil service or local authority will be disciplined or sacked.
“and no one working in the uncivil service or local authority will be disciplined or sacked.”
And what makes you think this is incompetence rather than participation the the scam?
Did you never wonder how in the Daily Mail of old it was always possible to find a big family from an ethnic minority being given a ‘luxury mansion’? Because someone from the same community was in the Housing Office and money was changing hands? Perish the thought.
And then there’s the Home |Office.
But James O’Brien and Yasmin A-B told me that the concept of benefits fraud was a fake story put forward by the nasty Daily Mail.
Penseivat,
“I wonder who these people are, who failed to check, or double check, these applications? A phone call or two, to the ‘doctors’, ‘landlords’, or ’employers’ would have revealed some, if not all, of these bogus applications. Despite the derisory custodial sentence which will be meted out to those found guilty, the fact is, that this money has gone, and no one working in the uncivil service or local authority will be disciplined or sacked.”
Everyone will have done their jobs, followed their orders, found ways not to do their jobs. Most people in government are bureaucratic, not entrepreneurial. That is to say, they aren’t looking to stop baddies. They are following the minimum version of the Stop Baddies Process set down. If the process says that you check there is a letter from a doctor, that’s all they’re going to do. These are not people who will look at the letter and think “that doesn’t read like a real doctor’s letter” and make a call.
I think Apocalypse Now is about the best movie about government. Almost everyone that Willard meets doesn’t care about winning the war. They just want to go home, score some weed, get some pussy, have some fun, have friends. The only person who does care about winning is Kurtz, and he’s considered as insane because he doesn’t follow the process. I can think of people I’ve worked with in local authorities and the civil service who are like this.
A few years ago I was told of the similarthings happening in N. Ireland with the Poles.
Fascinating. This was generally called the Irish Scam back in the 70s & 80s. There’s nothing new, is there?
If you’ve worked all your life and paid taxes and managed to scrape together £16K in savings you get nothing from UC if you lose your job. Somehow they’re able to check that.
Penseivat,
The doctor doesn’t answer the phone these days.
Britain (and the west in general) has a strange trust in paperwork. In the rest of the world you ask for documentation and they go “why?”, and you have to explain that your government requires a piece of paper, and that the person’s signature imbues the paper with magical qualities.
Erm, weren’t we told that migrants were not eligible for public benefits?
My wife certainly had “No recourse to public funds” stamped in her passport, and had to remain in that state for seven years, along with avoiding committing any offences, and – especially pertinant here – not leaving the country for more than a small number of months in total over the seven years.
I assume they also have to set up bank accounts in order to receive the payments etc.
Given the hoops a citizen has to jump through these days is there a shortcut there, I assume even the civil service isn’t stupid enough to pay the money to foreign accounts
The account they can pay into was probably something like Revolut that allows cheap foreign exchange and withdrawals.
This is a huge amount of money that has been wasted and the standard leftist response is going to be the usual flow from ‘it doesn’t happen’ to ‘it’s a small issue’ to ‘it’s a larger issue but nothing can be done without unfairly penalising people in need’ to ‘oh well. Never mind as the state can print money anyway’.
Boils my blood to see this blatant fraud.
I dealt with a Housing Benefit application once (this was pre UC so as done through local government, outer London). The letting agent would only offer viewings to potential tenants who could show they earned £43k.
The HB application evidence included self-employed accounts to show income of £16k.
Email to the letting agent to ask if could provide a copy of the evidence of the higher income with usual DPA disclosure statement – permitted for the purpose of assessing benefits,taxes etc.
Reply received showing self-employed accounts showing income of £43.5k.
Claim disallowed.
Can appeal but would need to provide evidence accountant admitted conspiracy to defraud.
Of course if housing was cheap, there’d be a lot less need to prevent this caper.
“ Given the hoops a citizen has to jump through these days is there a shortcut there, ”
These hoops are only there to make law abiding voters think that something has been to stop some illegal activity ie politicians have sorted out X in the “something must be done about X” headlines.
and no one working in the uncivil service or local authority will be disciplined or sacked.
Go look at the people working in the offices. You’ll find the majority of them are what one might call of “non-British origin”, up to management level. Who no doubt have relatives who are beneficiaries of similar scams. So they certainly don’t have much incentive to pursue scammers.
It’s the problem with a multicultural society. In a unicultural society, its members are commonly incentivised to defend & protect that society. In a multicultural society they’re only incentivised to protect their bit of it.