I heard this story on the news and it had me thinking about people who cheat the system and why they do it.
IMO there's an huge difference between this couple who cheated the tax payer out of £50,000 over 6 years and someone who takes a cash-in-hand job to earn a little extra cash without telling the taxman/benefit office.
Yes, cheating is cheating at the end of the day but I see one as pure greed and the other as a necessity. I'm sure most of us have done a little job here and there for cash - would you bother to declare every penny? Lots of people on benefits do covert jobs to try to help make ends meet but to claim disability, housing benefit, council tax benefit and income support on the premise that you're bed-ridden while all the time working in her partner's post office and sailing around on his private yacht is taking the piss big time!
Well said Sassy.
Big criminals and little thieves.
I dont think I approve of either although Im quite happy to make sure both I and the people I know well claim all of the benefits they are entitled to.
What I can't understand is how did she get the payments in the first place? I know of a woman who is genuinely bedridden and has 24 hr carers, but she is visited by Social Workers and other professionals on a regular basis to keep her care plan working efficiently. I can honestly say, if she wasn't there on a visit, payments towards her care would have stopped.
24 hr care is hard work and takes up a lot of professional's time in organising expert care, it's not so much that she's conned tax payers for me, it's more that she's taken care away from someone who genuinely deserves it.
Good point Mar.
We are of course short of detail but one report suggests her daughter was her primary carer.
I imagine professional thieves like this couple know every trick in the book in terms of lying consistently and avoiding professional intervention. Hats off to the fraud investigators say I.
The system is also at fault.
There are loads who cheat the system, if we are only talking benefits here. How this woman got away with it, God knows. But you see the benefits agency view people that they are all honest and would not cheat the system.
They are reliant many times of people " grassing up " cheats. They really do not have the resources to follow up and keep a check on every claimant.
So where you have dishonest people claiming benefits, the inevitable result will be fraud. It is not cheating the system it is fraud......pure and simple. Or in some cases false accounting.
But there are many others with a " bad back syndrome " who are also cheats. You know the guy who has that bad back, but manages to still work under his car...etc.
Until the whole system is updated and overhauled, it will continue to let these kinds of people con the system. Not an easy thing to do as to do that I am sure many innocent claimants would be penalised.
But an overhauled system will be on it's way, if the Tories get in next time. But no matter how fool proof you make the system, it still relies on peoples honesty.
I can give any reason going and somebody will know somebody who is genuine.
It is a fact that bad backs are one of the most difficult things to prove. I am fully aware there are people out there like your Father who has this symptom. But a lot are genuine and a lot play on the " bad back syndrome ".
If I said another symptom somebody else would have said their so and so relative was genuine and had it.
My point was clearly stated in my reply.
See my previous responses on dole cheats...
Yes it's wrong
Yes they should be punished
But they belong to a tiny minority let's not fall into the trap of extrapolating from this case to the conclusion that the majority if not all people on the sick are fiddling.
And I'll remind you again that if half the tax lost to off-shore accounts was paid where it should be, we could all have a week on the sick.
As Ben says Big criminals little thieves
I found a report on the overpayments of Disability Living allowance.
In essence for the period in question
£40 million on 10,000 cases was fraudulently claimed. (£4000 a case on average)
£630 million on 300,000 cases was paid out in error because the individuals circumstances changed. (£2100 a case on average)
£60 million was paid out on 30,000 cases due to official error.(£2000 a case on average)
Just to clarify the reason for the big number I quote
"In DLA there are some clear changes which the customer should report, for example hospitalization. However many of the changes are gradual improvements or deteriorations in medical condition and it is difficult for customers to know at what point their needs have changed to the extent that their entitlement to benefit is affected. In recognition of this, legislation provides that when a case is reassessed and benefit is reduced the Department will only raise and seek to recover an overpayment when it is reasonable for the customer to have realised they ought to have reported the change. In other cases the benefit will be treated as correct up to the point of reassessment."
The whole report is worth a gander
The biggest cheats are people like the Home Secretary improperly claiming humongous amounts of tax payers money whilst at the same time having a "grace and favour" apartment which would mean she can live in London free..
Edited cos I didnt research my point adequately.
benefit fraud £50,000 over 6 years.
Euro MP £1000,000 over 5 years.
Who is the real criminal here?
I'm happy for you if you believe that euro MP's are worth the money they can get. Earn it though? I am not convinced, we are talking expenses here not salaries.
Compare and contrast this fraud with ones I have personal knowledge of.
In 1995 a financial adviser was accused of stealing £13 million pounds (I kid you not) from his clients over 5 years.
Believe me he did it.
He plea bargained and was convicted of a lesser charge. His penalty was 180 hours of community service.
Big criminals and little thieves.
Its the big thieves rule the land.
With one hand the put a penny in the pot for the poor.
And with the other take another and a thousand more.
Excuse me....we're talking about people on per week doing small jobs for extra cash ?
I'll ignore the council-tax benefit, because it is paid directly to the council
Even Employment Support Allowance is a week ....nobody is going to sun-it in the Bahamas on that, or even rain-it in Brighton.
Compare that to .... 50 billion......now, THAT'S the way to con-it...
Ben, that's always been the case though hasn't it? White collar fraudsters getting away with laughably small sentences for multi-thousand and multi-million pound frauds motivated purely by greed, while working class cheats of the benefits system, living hand-to-mouth and simply trying to put food in their kids bellies, can expect prison terms for frauds in the low thousands. To be fair, things have moved over the last few years, with the UK Fraud Review aiming to at least get some sort of sentencing parity regardless of the perpetrator's class, and actually taking the scale of the fraud properly into account. At least cases like the one you describe should become a thing of the past, in theory at least. I wouldn't hold my breath, mind. ;)
Neil x x x ;)
I've never claimed any sort of benefit.
I've been in full-time employment paying tax and national insurance since I left school.
I worked part-time in a pub at weekends as well which went through the books although I'm not ashamed to say that I did the odd extra shift for cash in hand. Do I feel bad about that? No.
I would agree with what Mar said earlier in this thread about the people who genuinely need care and don't get it because of the people scamming the system. That's wrong.
There's a big difference between working the system and working for cash in my view.
Aye Neil and JTS it will be interesting to compare and contrast this couples treatment with that of Bernard Madoff referred to in JTS's post.
An estimate for white collar crime I found estimated £1.1 billion a year. If I compare that with the DLA fraud figures of £40 million well.............
I wont sing Rory's song again he'll start charging me for it.
sorry i decided to delete
Yup... I pay the stair cleaner and the gardener in cash. Whether they declare that to the taxman is their business. I would suspect not but I could be wrong.
