Fraudulent collection of employment benefit

[sidzer]

I Know a guy who was claiming SW in North and working with a builder in the border area. In one week he had two visits to his house and many phone calls from the SW officer. In the end he gave up work as they were hounding him so much........

From my limited experience of claiming SW I witnessed builders vans pulling up outside the office to let the lads off the sign and claim. Guys would sign on dressed in their work clothes! I also noticed a large number of northern reg cars droping people off to sign. However there are a large number of NI reg cars in a council estate in my town...

Is there any penalty for making a fraudulent claim? I have never heard of anyone getting done for this!

SW is an important support system for people who are genuinely out of work and job seeking. However, so many make a career out of it and expect the rest of society to house and feed them and their families and frankly this is not fair and breaks the social contract.

The system needs a major overhawl - weekly collection of money at the PO can easily be made by someones buddy..

 

[ClubMan]

Is there any penalty for making a fraudulent claim? I have never heard of anyone getting done for this!

Annual Report 2007 - Dept. of Social and Family Affairs

243 criminal cases were finalised in 2007 with the
following results:
Outcome Number
Fined 117
Imprisoned 12
Suspended Sentence 22
Community Service 7
Probation Act 53
Bound to the Peace 4
Adjourned/Struck out/dismissed 23
Withdrawn 2
Debt Paid/ Decree obtained 3
TOTAL 243

Pretty good success rate for the cases taken it seems!

 

[bamboozle]

wasnt Mary Hannifan on the radio last week on this matter and she was saying that out of a sample of 2000 sw claimants something like 10% were found to be either living abroad or claiming through other false pretences.
she was saying that weekly sign-on was coming back in claiming savings of 53million a year will be made.

All well and good but my question is WHY on earth did a situation exist where people can take advantage in the first place, surely there are more than enough civil servants in the dept of social welfare to actually monitor the activities of sw claimants.

 

[Caveat]

In fairness to staff at the dept. of SW, I believe that intimidation/threats from those under investigation is quite common.

 

[Welfarite]

wasnt Mary Hannifan on the radio last week on this matter and she was saying that out of a sample of 2000 sw claimants something like 10% were found to be either living abroad or claiming through other false pretences.

I wonder was that "sample" all non-Irish nationals. I find it hard to believe that 1 in 10 of people claiming the dole don't actually live in the country!

All well and good but my question is WHY on earth did a situation exist where people can take advantage in the first place,

because it's a fact of life that people will find their way around any rule if they want to.

surely there are more than enough civil servants in the dept of social welfare to actually monitor the activities of sw claimants.

There are. There are many posts in this forum complainign about this "monitoring"! This particular "fraud" arose from the department treated SW claimants as human beings and trusting them not to abuse a system that does not montior them too closely. The problem is that because of this abuse, every SW claimant has now to suffer.

 

[ClubMan]

wasnt Mary Hannifan on the radio last week on this matter and she was saying that out of a sample of 2000 sw claimants something like 10% were found to be either living abroad or claiming through other false pretences.

I wonder was that "sample" all non-Irish nationals. I find it hard to believe that 1 in 10 of people claiming the dole don't actually live in the country!

Or perhaps bamboozle is simply mistaken? Since s/he doens't seem certain about what was said in the first place?

 

[jhegarty]

Or perhaps bamboozle is simply mistaken? Since s/he doens't seem certain about what was said in the first place?

bamboozle was correct in the quote (meaning if not the exact words). Its 10% are living abroad or claiming through other false pretences.

 

[DeeFox]

From my limited experience of claiming SW I witnessed builders vans pulling up outside the office to let the lads off the sign and claim. Guys would sign on dressed in their work clothes!

I can't believe they would allow someone to sign on wearing a flurescent jacket or whatever!! Suerly this can't be true? If it is, that is a disgrace.

 

[ClubMan]

bamboozle was correct in the quote (meaning if not the exact words). Its 10% are living abroad or claiming through other false pretences.

Fair enough. The post seemed to express some uncertainty about the specific of the report/comments.

 

[gipimann]

I can't believe they would allow someone to sign on wearing a flurescent jacket or whatever!! Suerly this can't be true? If it is, that is a disgrace.

People can sign on if they're working part-time, or the person signing on might be a cyclist, or a learner motorcyclist, so a fluorescent jacket doesn't always mean something nefarious is going on!

 

[truthseeker]

When I was in college there was one guy who was was quite proud about the fact that he was registered as the English version of his name with a Dublin address as a college student but was claiming the dole using the Irish version of his name and his country address. So he got SW payments, and a government grant cheque, he had a cash in hand part time job, AND he was getting an education for free.

 

[ciars]

I remeber (back in the day) a lot of students in my year were also signing on. In fact it was quite regular to excuse your absence to your tutor by explaining you had to sign on this morning, and this was back when it was weekly signing.

There's also a programme called 'On the fiddle' on BBC (actually think tonight) about fraud claims in the UK. Unbelievable. Apart from the small scale working/signing cases the amount of large scale fraud is crazy. One elderly woman was on the fiddle to over a million STG.

 

[Yachtie]

I wonder was that "sample" all non-Irish nationals. I find it hard to believe that 1 in 10 of people claiming the dole don't actually live in the country!

Why? In theory, if your spouse is non-Irish, you bought a house ten years ago, you could have easily sold your house for a huge profit in recent years, moved to your spouse's country of origin where average wage is lower than the Irish SW payments, you could easily claim the dole (as an Irish) to supplement your income. I am sure that some of the cases are of such nature. Or, an Irish couple moving to Portugal for cheaper property and better weather. It's not impossible!

 

[bamboozle]

I wonder was that "sample" all non-Irish nationals. I find it hard to believe that 1 in 10 of people claiming the dole don't actually live in the country!



because it's a fact of life that people will find their way around any rule if they want to.



There are. There are many posts in this forum complainign about this "monitoring"! This particular "fraud" arose from the department treated SW claimants as human beings and trusting them not to abuse a system that does not montior them too closely. The problem is that because of this abuse, every SW claimant has now to suffer.

Sorry if my post was not clear enough but i did say through living abroad or through other false pretences

 

[Caveat]

Have to say I'm a bit bemused at the apparent surprise expressed at these shenanigans - always regarded dole fraud as very widespead, brazen, and pretty much common knowledge?

 

[bamboozle]

Have to say I'm a bit bemused at the apparent surprise expressed at these shenanigans - always regarded dole fraud as very widespead, brazen, and pretty much common knowledge?

well i was surprised when it was suggested by Hannifin up to 10% of claims were fraudulent, i am also surprised that the dept of social welfare have been facilitating this fraud by idiotically paying money directly into people’s bank account

 

[bond-007]

Nothing idiotic in paying people by bank transfer. Why should people be expected to be at a post office on the same day each week? Also people may not feel safe will all their money in cash. Also it can affect the budgeting of the receiver.

 

[tara83]

Just an off side - will this not open the way for increased post office raids if much larger amounts of cash are going to be held on days known to everyone. Surely the idea of bank transfer was to cut down on this and also human resources. There must be a better way of assessing the legitamasy of people claiming

 

[DublinTexas]

I'm confused here about the "non nationals" examples because if s/he returns to the home country there are 2 options:

a.) They can transfer up to 3 month of Irish benefit to any EU country if they look for work in that country and that includes their "national" home country.

b.) The time they contributed to the Irish PRSI will count towards their own countries unemployment benefit calculation in most states.

So there is no need to jump onto a cheap ryanair flight, there are fully legal options available. Maybe our civil servants should explain that to people.

And in respect of now forcing people to go to the post office, that is bad news for me a customer of the post office. My local post office is already a no go zone on several days because most of the callers are there to collect their social welfare. With no seperate counter or queue for people trying to pay AnPost for sending letters/parcels this is not customer service.

 

[Welfarite]

When I was in college there was one guy who was was quite proud about the fact that he was registered as the English version of his name with a Dublin address as a college student but was claiming the dole using the Irish version of his name and his country address. So he got SW payments, and a government grant cheque, he had a cash in hand part time job, AND he was getting an education for free.

I remeber (back in the day) a lot of students in my year were also signing on. In fact it was quite regular to excuse your absence to your tutor by explaining you had to sign on this morning, and this was back when it was weekly signing.

quote=truthseeker;676122]Must have been some years ago. Nowadays Sw X-refs with college lists of students (PPSNs now recorded by colleges and county councils) so they've caught up with that one! Must have been a great scam pre-computer days though.

Why? In theory, if your spouse is non-Irish, you bought a house ten years ago, you could have easily sold your house for a huge profit in recent years, moved to your spouse's country of origin where average wage is lower than the Irish SW payments, you could easily claim the dole (as an Irish) to supplement your income. I am sure that some of the cases are of such nature. Or, an Irish couple moving to Portugal for cheaper property and better weather. It's not impossible!

So you reckon 10% of claimants fall into this category then?