More benefit fraud

What's been happening in the past few days?

In London Josef Kolendowicz, who defrauded two local authorities and the DWP out of almost £100,000, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison.

In Harrow a couple fraudulently claimed £7,626 from Harrow Council to decorate their house, not revealing they had over £30,000 in savings. A Swanley man concealed bank accounts and so fraudulently claimed over £7,000 from Sevenoaks District Council.

In Northampton Nomathemba Moche admitted receiving housing benefit, council tax benefit and incapacity benefit totalling almost £3,000 despite returning to work.

A Basingstoke woman unlawfully claimed £3,870 after failing to tell the council that her husband was working.

Javeid Akhtar and Banaras Ali from Leeds, described as brothers, made £225,000 over ten years from a benefit fraud scam involving their extended family. Both were sentenced to four and a half years in prison and they must pay almost £224,000 in compensation and £41,000 costs.

A Renfrewshire family of 13 have been charged with obtaining £569,000 in tax credits.

Huntingdonshire magistrates last week sentenced four fraudsters over a total of almost £14,000 in false claims.

And a woman from Dursley has pleaded guilty to benefit fraud after falsely claiming over £17,000. The account of her home life is (perhaps understandably) confusing, but the key point is that the fraud was deliberate.

It's reported that benefit fraudsters in Corby have stolen more than £160,000 of public money in the past year, "prompting a council crackdown on cheats". Hm. Didn't they realise it's happening everywhere?

But detection isn't always straightforward. For instance investigators in Wirral have a specially equipped vehicle to undertake covert surveillance on customers suspected of benefit fraud. The costs in time and money must be great. The fraud minister claims: "Our message to those people considering benefit theft is simple: don't do it - we will catch you". Not if detection is that time-consuming, they won't.

As for those legally on benefits, The Spectator's Coffee House blog points out that two disintegrating communities highlighted in Panorama have 28% of adults on welfare, but just 5% on jobseeker's allowance, while Peter Hitchens says 50,000 drug abusers are claiming incapacity benefit "and no doubt a lot of other benefits on top, presumably including exemption from council tax".

It is a defiance of the known laws of the land. And we reward them with pensions as if they had fought for their country, when all they've done is shame it, and all we owe them is a narrow cell and a bowl of porridge.

Worse, in a way, is the fact that the inadequate wages and pensions of postmen, school-dinner ladies and retired soldiers are plundered by the taxman and the town hall to keep these people idle in their squalid nests, where they no doubt bring misery to neighbours and to the thousands of children said (terrifyingly) to be in their care.

How did this happen? Who devised the regulations? Will anything bad happen to them?

When did we, as a people, sign this national suicide pact that rewards disgusting irresponsibility and punishes everyone else?

Separately the Daily Mail reports on film of radical Muslim preacher talking about fraudulently claiming benefits and giving advice on how to cheat the Government.

After a story about a wealthy man, he said: "There was one man, he had a lot of money - just like us, we have a lot of money today from the income support and the incapacity benefit.

"Obviously when you have the incapacity benefit, you want to make sure you walk with a limp when you leave the house just in case there's someone taking pictures.

"Obviously you don't need to tell them that, the Department of Work and Pensions."

The welfare state is spawning widespread abuse. Several of today's cases are deliberate frauds, planned from the outset. But poor people can get what for them are large amounts of money simply by not volunteering new information.

What this series of posts strongly suggests is that benefit fraud is widespread and expensive. Not all court cases are reported on the internet. Not all cases get to court. Many are dealt with administratively. Doubtless huge numbers of cases go undetected.

There are evidently many people out there who find the temptation just too great. Detection needs to become swifter and surer, and penalties I'm afraid need to become harsher, so that they do deter.