The Bulgarian town that boomed from UK’s biggest benefits fraud

25 comments

1. Key lines:

   >The gang had thousands of “customers” and joked about the inability of the Department for Work and Pensions to catch them in messages shared on WhatsApp

   >He found that thousands of people, of whom many had never visited Britain, were receiving up to £2,500 a month in benefits from the UK.

   >Many travelled here for a short period of time to support the claim before returning to Bulgaria with the claim remaining ongoing. Some never even travelled here.”

   >Once the benefits were approved, Mr Panaytov claimed the “customers” had to pay a one-off commission of between £500 and £800, after which they would receive on average between £2,000 and £2,500 a month.

   >He said: “Our investigation found that a few thousand people were customers of this scheme and it is likely that many are still receiving money through similar schemes.

   >“Nikolova had at least 5,000 to 6,000 customers and Ali was operating a similar scheme on a similar level.”

   >The DWP would sometimes ask for pictures of people outside properties with the front door open to prove they lived there.

   >The gang would take a picture of a fraudulent claimant outside an address and then Photoshop the image to make the door appear ajar.

   >The officer said that the majority of the customers, and commissioners, were from the Roma minority community.

   >Inspector Vassil Panayotov said he was amazed British officers had not detected the fraud sooner 

2. He found that thousands of people, of whom many had never visited Britain, were receiving up to £2,500 a month in benefits from the UK

   Says it all

3. Scumbags like this make life extremely difficult for people who are legitimately trying to claim benefits, it just makes a certain demographic of voters brand everyone on benefits as scroungers and then it becomes great ammo for the Tories who proceed to make life even worse for those claiming them.

4. 6000 people homeless in my town. 4 hotels full of immigrants & no help for citizens. Whole country is finished.

5. What serious country would actually give benefits to foreign nationals who have immigrated there in the first place? Immigrants should **always** be net contributors and be the most upstanding of citizens given the fact that they simply don’t need to be here. Claiming of benefits, being unable to support yourself or the committing of the minutest of crimes should be grounds for instant deportation and the fact that this stance is deemed controversial in the slightest is insane to me.

6. How are they getting £2.5k per month? Are they all claiming every disability known to man?

7. Maybe refocus some of the effort grilling people with lifelong illness to catching actual fraud.

8. How are they claiming £2.5k ?
   I spent 6 months on UC and was only receiving £350 a month.

9. The scale of this makes me suspect that there was someone or indeed several people working on the inside at the Dept for Works and Pensions. More than likely originally from said Bulgarian village.

   I am sick of foreign parasites, whether they arrive in private jets or leaking boats. Send them back.

10. This country just doesn’t care about itself.

    If you want an answer, that’s it. That’s why we are in decline.

11. I have family members from a Pacific-Asian country. They tell me about the Facebook groups operating in plain site discussing how to get into the UK illegally and how to stay here, how to claim the maximum amount of benefits. How can I find a husband? How can I find a man to have a baby as quickly as possible? What lies do I need to tell to make sure I get housed? What age should I say I am (a lot of them pretend to be under 18)? There are people claiming they have thirty grand available for anyone willing to marry them and there’s plenty of others willing to help and provide advice. The problem is, it’s all discussed in the language of that country, so unless you speak it you won’t see it. I was unaware until I was shown it, but they’re not even hiding it in most cases, it’s just protected by the language barrier.

12. Don’t worry. Just keep voting Lab/Con and all will be well.

13. I’m always told by lefties that immigrants can’t access benefits. Yet here we have hundreds of millions going to people not even in the country

14. This country is fucking ridiculous. The solution is very simple – if you are not a British citizen you don’t get a penny in benefits. Not eligible for social housing, not eligible for housing benefit, not eligible for PIP. Not eligible for free NHS care. Not eligible for NHS dentistry. Emergency care and treatment for communicable diseases only.

15. People could come here, give some fake address claim benefits for themselves and for their family who are living in their own country then just go home and rape the uk tax payers. EU is mental and this is/was totally broken.

16. I have a family member that’s gone to work for the DWP at a Job Centre from the end of last year. They were supposed to be getting a full 6 months (during which they would be on probation for a full-time contract) training on how to assess claims and those making them. This got boiled down by necessity to barely two months of on-again/off-again computer learning, or time shadowing the real thing. Because this particular centre is so ridiculously understaffed.

    In their first week “live” they had a list of 28 Claimants they had to get through which on any given day amounted to 10 whole minutes to see them face to face or phone them.

    In that 10 minutes they had to establish bona-fides, sort out eligibility for housing benefit and any other related issues, trawl through what could be many tens of pages of computer “history” and arrange help/assistance/course/education and any follow up required. Try doing that all day every day in ten minute chunks while the bosses simply pile more cases onto your list. Mistakes are built into that system.

    And that’s before the fact that also in that first week they identified SIX likely cases of “irregularity” they would require further investigation – mostly cases of dubious settlement or suspect “family” arrangements. One geezer appeared with three different non-UK nationals who couldn’t speak English claiming that all three were his relatives and he had to speak for them. He was an Afghan national whose relatives turned out to be a Romanian, a Bulgarian and a Moldovan. That’s quite a family spread.

    Of the six cases identified this was the ONLY one that was even investigated, and after two weeks the Dept backed down and Geezer was able to keep “representing” young women who obviously were nothing to do with his family. Who all had claims paying them around £1700/2300 because of housing benefit.

    This is all anecdotes from one case-worker, in one DWP Office in one run down part of London. It’s no surprise to me now how something such as this reported Bulgarian Fraud-Ville is not only possible, but practically unavoidable under current arrangements and laws.

17. yet my dad who lost job after 14 years could not even get JSA and when he did they only gave him 150 a week that only covered his fuel/lunch he prepared at home to go for a job they asked him miles away. lovely that UK Tax payers get barely much after they worked and paid taxes.

18. The current system is mostly trust based. Makes it as difficult for legit people to apply while completely toothless against actual scammers who committed their cause.

19. Benefits should be tied to NI credits for all able bodied adults above a certain age. Anyone dipping into benefits should replenish their NI credits to be eligible for full state pension.

20. It is sick that some bureaucracy savant was fishing clients that want to grab easy money, take it abroad and do not get taxed by it. Sick, I said.

    Definitely, they should do something about rich people and multinational companies avoiding taxes and using tax havens to hide the money.

21. How is this possible when I’m constantly told the benefits system is too harsh and brutally requires people to demonstrate they’re looking for work?

22. Just a reminder to everyone that benefit fraud is a tiny amount compared to corporate and billionaire tax avoidance and evasion. The people that own newspapers like the one that contains this story want you to be angry with people committing this kind of fraud so you don’t think about the other kind.

    The other thing to remember is that there will always be fraud. But the more you crack down on it, the more people in genuine need will be forced out of the support structure. Think of fraud as the cost of providing support to everyone that needs it.

23. As an honest UK citizen I have to battle to get what I am deserved from them but these come in and take it all with ease, I suspect it is an inside job at the DWP with anyone opposing them facing violence. In that case the more money they save from denying genuine claimants the more they can give the crims and take a back hander.

24. It is disgusting to see that type of people, who are not even Bulgarians, but merely bulgarian citizens. These people are from our Roma community and make the whole country look bad in Europe for some stupid minority that doesn’t work, doesn’t contribute, just takes money, and never works.

25. I was assured that this never happens and that benefit fraud is tiny