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Tackling Benefit Fraud

Posted 8:59 18 April 2014

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Continuing on with the theme of investigating fraud, this week are going to look at the murky world of the people that claim benefits that they are not entitled to.

Fraud…….It’s a huge problem that cost the UK taxpayers approximately 2 billion pounds in 2012.
In December last year the Express ran a story which reported that only 5% of the 8,700 benefit cheats identified were convicted in England and Wales were jailed in 2011-12, there were however, more than 2,500 people convicted of committing benefit fraud where they received more than £10,000 avoided prison sentences. It goes on to say that there needs to be a determined effort in getting these cases to court in the first place and then to increase the conviction rate.
According to the BBC in an online article that was published in November last year there is a huge discrepancy in the instances of fraud based on location. However, while you would expect some regional differences to be purely due to the fact there are less people claiming benefits in Kensington than there are in Middlesbrough for example, there has to be some consideration of how the councils that reported no fraud at all actually ran their investigations.
There are several ways that the council can investigate benefit fraud and they are set out below:
Investigation techniques.

What if a set procedure was set in place using these techniques and every council had to follow it?  You might find that there is an increase in detection and conviction rates, which will ultimately benefit us all.
Until next time.
fraud