Welfare fraud
[1] Apart from the obvious methodological problems, research reveals that interviewing performance is often mediocre, and may be anecdotal, misunderstood, or collected from opinionated or biased caseworkers.
Statistical research indicates that the vast majority of fraud is committed by businesses serving the recipients of government benefits.
[11] In France, the Caisse d'allocations familiales reported in 1994 an estimated amount to 2,000 to 3,000 fraud cases per year, which was considered low.
[13] German authorities assume that welfare fraud by relatively well-off people of Turkish origin is common, although there is no statistics concerning its scope.
[14] In Braunschweig asylum seekers were able to defraud the government of £3 to £5 million euros in some 300 cases by creating multiple identities.
It is suspected to have been led by a parliamentarian who provided Bulgarians and Romanians with false work contracts and collected millions of Euros.
The Irish Examiner earlier noticed, "gone are the days when this crime – and that's the correct term – was greeted with knowing nods, winks and grudging admiration for certain people who knew the system inside out and 'could get away with it.
[3] A Channel 10 report contended that thousands of haredim who nominally study Torah full-time are in essence working illegally.
When their reporter Dov Gilhar advertised in Bnei Brak for workers for a fictitious company, it turned out that most applicants intended to exploit the benefits they receive as yeshiva students, although they would work.
[7] In 2011, the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration had over 100 Somali women who had divorced their husbands to claim extra income support as the sole provider for the family, then had more children to their ex-husbands.
This has created, in the words of Eckart Kuhlborn, "a crime prevention eldorado" by making it possible to identify households which have reported different incomes.
[28] A UK State of the Nation report published in 2010 estimated the total benefit fraud in the United Kingdom in 2009–10 to be approximately £1 billion.
[29] Figures from the Department for Work and Pensions show that benefit fraud is thought to have cost taxpayers £1.2 billion during 2012–13, up 9% from the year before.
[30] A poll conducted by the Trades Union Congress in 2012 found that perceptions among the British public were that benefit fraud was high.
[33]In the first half of the fiscal year 2012, the office of the Inspector General of the Social Security Administration was able to detect frauds that cost the government over $253 million.
[41] The US Federal government has recouped hundreds of millions from fraudsters and other misappropriations of funds from the Social Security Administration alone.
[43] The campaigns led to increases in tip-offs and successful prosecutions, but there is no evidence of a lasting impact on benefit fraud loss.
[51] There is also a clear correlation between increased social spending and deteriorating benefit morale, a phenomenon predicted by economist Assar Lindbeck.
[51] Differential association and social disorganisation leads to subgroups holding deviant value systems, which may include tolerance of, and even expectations of, welfare fraud.
Although there is evidence for a prevalent fraud culture influencing social cohesion in some neighborhoods, this is a politically sensitive issue.
The Department for Work and Pensions in the UK has a policy of refraining from routinely identifying cultural clusters where welfare fraud is likely to be most prevalent.
Many assess the risk of being caught as minimal,[6] and it has been suggested that a widespread lack of understanding and underprediction of the sanctions for breaking the rules may contribute to this.
[1] In an Israeli study of welfare recipients, all interviewees personally knew people who had been caught, and most had been subject to investigations and surveillance, yet they stated clearly that the risk of facing punishment (including criminal charges) did not affect their behavior.
