Benefits crime chasing for money

ziggyboy4435

Hi everyone,

I have a question i'm asking for a very close friend of mine, Yes its not me ( I promise)

He was claiming sick money for approx 2 yrs and also working from 2005-2007 , He then got caught and ended up doing 9 weeks in prison for 10k worth of benefits fraud, He lost his job while serving time and i believe he learned his lesson, When he came out he found another job and moved on from the ordeal,

He is now with a woman who has 3 children and like everyone in the world finding it hard to meet ends meet,

Anyway the long and short of it all is that he has just started receiving letters from a DCA asking for payment for the 10k, He has had no contact from anyone since about the debt,

Does the statue barred law come into force after 6yrs or will they and can they chase him forever on this debt, can they get attachment of earnings or even send people to his door ) Bailiffs ?

Thanks

HappyMJ

Benefits overpayments due to fraud can be recovered forever. There are no statute barred time limits. Overpayments due to administrative errors can be recovered (by way of attachment of earnings) for up to 6 years but they can always be recovered at any time from future benefit payments from the same agency such as the DWP including from a pension in many years time.

If he is finding it difficult to make end meet then they need to cut expenses and pay a minimal amount towards this debt and look towards increasing income. They will not reduce his income below what they would get if they were living on benefits (plus a small amount for travel to work costs using the cheapest method i.e a bus not a car) so they need to learn to live on that amount of money.

ziggyboy4435

cheers Happy , will pass this on to him

ziggyboy4435

srry to ask another question, What do you think will be the next course of action if he just ignores the letters?

HappyMJ

ziggyboy4435 wrote: »

srry to ask another question, What do you think will be the next course of action if he just ignores the letters?

Personally, in my opinion not much.... the DCA will return the debt back to the creditor and then the creditor will consider taking further action. If the creditor is the DWP they can ask the HMRC for employer details if he is PAYE employed they may ask for an attachment of earnings order. If he's on DWP benefits they'll just take the money from benefits. They could also secure the debt against an asset that he owns such as a house. Once that happens then they won't do anything further as they will get the money from the sale of the house even if the sale isn't going to happen for decades.

His credit report will not be damaged and he will not spend further time in prison so really there isn't a huge amount they can do.

ziggyboy4435

thanks again