Would you report someone you knew for benefit fraud?

kevykat

any advice guys, i stay in a block of flats with 4 council tenants and 6 owners. 2 out of 4 council tenants are a*seholes
But the one below us is the worse, with loud music etc.
to get to the point she doesn't work, has a teenage son and a young daughter (5-7 yr old). The child's school is less than a mile away but the mother some how can afford taxis twice a day cos she's so lazy. she pays for the taxis as ive seen her hand over cash. approx fare £7 so that's £70 a week on taxi fares. how can this scumbag afford this? also the smell of cannabis from their place most days to, how can she also afford this?

unfortunately i don't know what she's claiming for but i reckon something ain't right

Pollycat

You've posted on a thread titled 'Would you report someone you knew for benefit fraud?'

I think the circumstances you describe and the OP's post is quite different - see below:

burtons wrote: »

She has 2 kids and is claiming as a single person but her boyfriend lives with her and he is on good money. Now his wage is more a week than all my money put together from my wage my working tax credit and child tax credit. She gets all her rent and council tax paid and she is down the school saying she never goes out or never got any money, now she goes out every weekend and when she has bought something new all her friends knows about it.

I'm all for people getting benefits they actually deserve but in this situation IMO I don't think it's fair to people that are struggling like myself.

So, would you report them or would you just let it slide?

I'm not sure you have sufficient reason to report someone for benefit fraud as you do not know what she is claiming.
If she is legitamately claiming benefits (and I'm not going to get into a discussion about who should be entitled to benefits), it's really up to her how she spends that money.

However, I would phone the Police regarding the cannabis.

You posted a while ago about various problems with neighbours - did you take any of the advice you were given?

kevykat

aint done anything about the noise, since my other post there as been little to no noise from them.
i called the police once explaining the cannabis and the fact they have a young child there. nothing was done. the next time i smell that stuff i think i will call the police
theres just something funny about the family though. strange comings and goings, cos they are ground floor i also see people coming and going out her window now and again

I still think shes at it with the benefit thing. even i couldn't affort to spend £70 on taxis a week. and someone whos on little money like her shouldnt be able to either when the school is a 10 min walk

pmduk

Whilst I've no sympathy whatsoever for people who steal benefit, it's not right to accuse someone just because of their spending patterns. Stick to complaining about what you can prove. In the circumstances described I might be reporting them to Social Services for the environment in which the children are being raised.

Camewrong

I signed up because of this thread. Mostly because I don't appreciate all the money wasting experts who keep telling everyone to waste taxpayers money on phoning up the DWP fraud line every five minutes over trivial things.

Phoning the fraud line is not free of cost. People have to be paid to process all those reports. The vast bulk of the reports are from timewasters and from malicious scumbags who just want to cause trouble to innocent people to satisfy their personal grudges. There's no proper balance in the system to deal with the malicious scum either. Because of the anonymity given to those that make reports they get to use the DWP to harass their victims and we all pay for it.

So please consider how much time and money you are costing yourself and everyone else before you rush to report something trivial.

Now let's look at how much it costs us all to take minor benefits cheats through the whole system.

I would post the link, but the forum prevents new signups from posting links, so please search The Sun website for 'One day One Court 16 benefit fraud cases' if you want to read the whole article that the following quote comes from.

The_Sun wrote:

The defendants - nicked amid claims welfare fiddling is spiralling out of control - were accused of scams that totalled £120,000.
But that bill is dwarfed by the cost of prosecuting them - estimated at a whopping HALF A MILLION quid in court time, lawyers' fees and the expense of investigating the 16

The Sun failed to do some simple thinking on costs.

So spending approximately five times the money on chasing minor benefits cheats through the 'justice' system is going to save the country money? Will it heck. Simple maths. It costs us a lot more than if we turned a blind eye or did something better, like maybe investing that five hundred grand in things that would create jobs for the people on benefits to do.

Don't be fooled into thinking that the costs to the taxpayer end at the point of sentencing the benefits 'cheats' either. If as is very likely, they remain on benefits afterwards then the taxpayer gets no money back and the costs just continue to rise. Doesn't help that the 'cheat' picks up a criminal record which makes them even less employable either.

So do please put a bit more thought into things before rushing to report. You are costing me and everyone else money by doing so when you don't need to. I'd rather not have you wasting my tax money on huge criminal justice bills which could easily be avoided. So if you have a problem with someone who might be taking the Michael over benefits then do us all a favour and find a way to satisfy your up-tight conscience that doesn't waste a whole lot of the nation's money.

kaya

let he who is without sin.........................
and if we are brave enough to admit it none of us are perfect, i say live and let live, if you want to do something usefull you should be lobbying the duck house and moat brigade, they steal much more money from the taxpayers but your post appears not to mention them, a touch of the green eyed monster maybe?

Camewrong

Can't post the Dizzy thinks blog links because the forum won't let new users do that. If you want them, PM me.

Dizzy_Thinks_blog wrote:

Between February 2006 and January 2007 the National Benefit Fraud Hotline received 211,355 calls according to a written answer from the DWP.

[...]

[D]uring the same period there was a massive 608 prosecutions for benefit fraud as a result of evidence provided to the hotline.

That represents about a 0.28% success rate of calls which lead to prosecution. This could suggest that the line is a bit of a waste of money, or it could represent the fact that there are a lot of people out there who really hate their neighbours, or maybe both.

Different link

Dizzy_Thinks_blog wrote:

In the six years preceding the previously mentioned figures, the average number of calls each year to the Benefit Fraud Hotline was 199,191 (rounded up by 0.25). At the same time the average number of prosecutions achieved as a result of these calls for each year was 628. This actually represents an average hit rate of 0.31% so things are looking up from earlier (as an average at least)!

[...]

In figures I've received under FoI, the operating costs for NBFH during 2005/06 is not the £986,000 joint budget that Parliament was told and is in fact significantly higher for just the NBFH. The FoI response states clearly that the "actual operating costs for NBFH during 2005/06 was £1,212,901". This represents an overspend of £226,901 on NBFH alone.

The FoI response (drawn up in January) goes on to state that the "forecasted operating costs for 2006/2007 are £1,497,425" which is in marked comparison to the supposed budget allocation of just £597,010 in the Parliamentary response. This forecast represents an overspend of £900,415 on just one project in a budget that, according to the Government, exists for two distinct projects.

This leads to a few important questions. Firstly, who and how is the overspend being paid for? Secondly (and perhaps most importantly), isn't someone somewhere being fraudulent (how ironic) with the benefit fraud hotline figures?

Shall we all give thanks again to those money wasting experts who keep telling everyone to phone the DWP fraud line? A huge great thanks for wasting everyone's money. Big fat thank you to every timewaster, loser, and malicious scumbag who made all the worthless calls as well.

Harry_Flashman

Absolutely depends on whether the person was someone I considered a 'friend'.

qetu1357

Camewrong wrote: »

I signed up because of this thread. Mostly because I don't appreciate all the money wasting experts who keep telling everyone to waste taxpayers money on phoning up the DWP fraud line every five minutes over trivial things.

Phoning the fraud line is not free of cost. People have to be paid to process all those reports. The vast bulk of the reports are from timewasters and from malicious scumbags who just want to cause trouble to innocent people to satisfy their personal grudges. There's no proper balance in the system to deal with the malicious scum either. Because of the anonymity given to those that make reports they get to use the DWP to harass their victims and we all pay for it.

So please consider how much time and money you are costing yourself and everyone else before you rush to report something trivial.

Now let's look at how much it costs us all to take minor benefits cheats through the whole system.

I would post the link, but the forum prevents new signups from posting links, so please search The Sun website for 'One day One Court 16 benefit fraud cases' if you want to read the whole article that the following quote comes from.


The Sun failed to do some simple thinking on costs.

So spending approximately five times the money on chasing minor benefits cheats through the 'justice' system is going to save the country money? Will it heck. Simple maths. It costs us a lot more than if we turned a blind eye or did something better, like maybe investing that five hundred grand in things that would create jobs for the people on benefits to do.

Don't be fooled into thinking that the costs to the taxpayer end at the point of sentencing the benefits 'cheats' either. If as is very likely, they remain on benefits afterwards then the taxpayer gets no money back and the costs just continue to rise. Doesn't help that the 'cheat' picks up a criminal record which makes them even less employable either.

So do please put a bit more thought into things before rushing to report. You are costing me and everyone else money by doing so when you don't need to. I'd rather not have you wasting my tax money on huge criminal justice bills which could easily be avoided. So if you have a problem with someone who might be taking the Michael over benefits then do us all a favour and find a way to satisfy your up-tight conscience that doesn't waste a whole lot of the nation's money.

Of course it costs more to prosecute benefit cheats than it saves.

It also costs more to prosecute a murderer, a rapist, a mugger or a child abuser that it saves too.

Should we not prosecute them either?

jennyjelly

You also have to take into account the deterrent effect. One successful prosecution which costs more than it saves might prevent a dozen of the benefit cheat's friends and neighbours from taking the risk, thereby more than paying for itself.