Pamela Gill from Great Houghton dishonestly claimed dishonestly claimed £6,277 in Housing Benefit and £2,196 in Council Tax Benefit from April 2005 until May 2009. She had failed to declare she had over £20,000 in savings.
She got away with a two-year conditional discharge and an order to pay £400 costs. She must also repay the overpaid benefits.
In a separate case, Abdirahman Abdow from Northampton was found guilty in his absence of dishonestly claiming £861in Council Tax Benefit. He was ordered to pay a £350 fine, £50 costs and £15 Victim Surcharge by Northampton Magistrate's Court. He is also to repay the overpaid benefits. How likely is all that? They've probably written it off already.
In October 2009 when Northampton Council received information that Mr Abdow was receiving Tax Credits that he had not declared to the Council.
Officers working on the case uncovered evidence showing that Mr Abdow had failed to declare he had received over £2,000 in Tax Credits. When interviewed under caution Mr Abdow admitted he knew he should have declared the Tax Credit.
So there you have it. Two cases where dishonest people easily ran rings round the clunking fist's benefits arrangements.
2 comments:
I agree, people should obey the law, however daft it is, but there are times when the law is either stupid or deliberately designed to encourage "fraud".
a) Why should benefits be subject to an asset-based means test? Either we want people to save up or we don't, and asset-based means testing seems to me to be particularly spiteful (and easy to defraud - you kust don't declare savings).
b) There are too many benefits (over seventy at the last count). How is anybody supposed to guess whether your HB is based on total income before or after adding Tax Credits. What's the point of giving one benefit (Tax Credits) and then withdrawing another one (Housing Benefit) as a result?
Yes, I have heard of far worse scams than this, some actually with the cooperation of housing departments helping people to claim their local housing allowance based on the size of the family and not the house size. Of families bringing in extra people to increase HB entitlement, all sorts
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