Benefits cheats, do you know one?

Mt61

Nope I don’t blame you, I couldn’t report someone if I knew they were genuinely struggling.

The problem is that benefit cheats get lumped together and, not only that, they are similarly defined when there is talk / debate on "people-on-benefits"- and some random on social media proclaims "take away their benefits, then they'll have to get a job" (or similar observations).

And when the media wants to highlight the issue of people "on benefits" - it nearly always picks the worst possible example, ie, (slight exaggeration here but you get the drift), Single Mother with 5 Children by Different Fathers claims £xxxx benefits per month - and then shows multiple photo's of said mother with manicured eyebrows, 'designer' clothes, hair-highlights, etc, etc, and, if it happens to be around December, more photo's of Christmas presents stacked high under a tree.

But they never seem to interview, or seek out, those like the woman I knew. It's all so politicised.

We know there are the serial / organised benefit cheats - but where are the checks that used to be carried out - at least in the 70s - when this kind of racket might have been detected?

The woman I mentioned I know had more than one visit from 'Social Security' to her home. She had to answer in person lots of questions and provide lots of evidence of her situation. During one of the visits, I was in fact present because my friend was quite poorly and just wanted the moral support. The woman from SS was quite kind and sympathetic - but she was also very thorough (this was prior to the time when my friend was working cash-in-hand). The amount of documentation etc that she needed to see, the number of questions my friend had to answer... really it was considerable. If she'd been one of those 'organised' benefit cheats, there's no way she would've got away with it.

But, does anyone do these checks / visits now? In the interests of cutting-costs I think they've largely been stopped and the department now relies on the public to report their suspicions. I wonder how much money they've actually saved this way - and how many innocent people have been 'dobbed in' because of the public's perception of "people on benefits" highlighted by the politicised media?

Organised benefit fraud, as far as I am concerned, is no different from any other fraudulent activity - or tax evasion (as opposed to avoidance). They are all birds of the same feather.

Dickens

“But, does anyone do these checks / visits now? In the interests of cutting-costs I think they've largely been stopped and the department now relies on the public to report their suspicions. I wonder how much money they've actually saved this way - and how many innocent people have been 'dobbed in' because of the public's perception of "people on benefits" highlighted by the politicised media?

Organised benefit fraud, as far as I am concerned, is no different from any other fraudulent activity - or tax evasion (as opposed to avoidance). They are all birds of the same feather.”

Yes, well said.

A lot of benefit overpayment is done through the returns sent in by banks and savings sources.

I have carefully talked about benefit overpayment, because not all of it is cheating. I had a client, a lady in constant pain from arthritis who had a Pensions Agency person come round to fill in the form for her. She asked specifically whether the lady had a deposit account with the bank or a building society account, all of which she gave details of, but didn't ask the 'catchall' question, 'Do you have any other savings. This lady had a couple of thousand pounds in a Post Office account and without the catch all question she thought the PO account did not count. The sum involved was small. She had to repay £s, a couple of hundred, but it was inadvertent. When you are in constant pain, you do not always think clearly.