Benefit Fraud Investigation - can you help?

We all hear a lot about the efforts to combat benefit fraud and much is made of the larger cases that reach the attention of the hacks in the main stream media. But we all know that millions of pounds of public money is hoovered up by low level crooks and never recovered by councils due to the overly cumbersome systems and processes that prevent the hard working public servants from being effective in their jobs.

The White Ferret has it on good authority that one Council in the South East of England has instigated an age bar on prosecuting fraudsters. They do not persue any fraudster aged over 65. At the time of writing The White Ferret does not have any reason for this decision and is seeking further evidence as to the truth of this and is working to discover more.

Please contact the White Ferret by email whiteferret@hotmail.co.uk  if you can help.
We need to know some, or all, of the following

1. Your councils written Benefit Fraud Prosecution Policy (you can email or DM a link to @thewhiteferret or email as an attachment)

2. What the reality is.Is the policy followed or is life in your council very different?

3. How many cases are put forwards to the Fraud Team in your council ?

4. How many are actually procecuted ?

5. Why were cases dropped ?

It would be helpful to know the details such as:

a) The amount of overpayment
b) the period over which it occured
c) voluntary disclosure
d) previous instantces of fraud
e) mental and physical condition of the accused and their partner
f) social factors
g) inadequate evidence
h) failure in investigation
i) lack of resources to investigate etc
j) failure in benefir adminsitration
h) delays

The White Ferret knows that having a written policy is all well and good for the audit trail, but its what happens on the front desk and the deals done by the water cooler that really matter.

Many of us see these bad things occuring all around us and feel powerless to act etc. If we work together we can make a difference.

Go Team Ferret !!!!