£54 mill benefits fraud - likely sentence?

[autumnsum]

MBVitoria said:

Not my area but I reckon 7 years each taking into account reduction for guilty plea. Automatically eligible for release after 50% served.

Back home after 3.5 years. Their relatives will probably have very nice homes and lots of money, all earned legitimately of course and no obvious link to the defendants.

Vast amounts of it will be in crypto, will probably double in value before they are even out.

That's generational wealth for their families for maybe hundreds of years to come. All for 3.5 years in prison.

Amazing.

[mcflurry]

I'd love to know how they got away with it for so long.
A few years ago my wife applied, they did what seemed like 101 checks before replying with a refusal..

[Chucky-egg]

Patio said:

What are they likely to face? Banged up at our expense?

Bet most of the cash is now in Eastern Europe anyway...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-6877424...

Mistake they made was being commoners. £54m fraud is small change if you’re rich, bit of a sweetener to HMRC or an MP and you’re laughing.

I’d rather know where the £37bn for ‘track and trace’ went, plus all the multi-billions in useless PPE. Or a billion-by-billion breakdown of exactly what we’ve spent the HS2 money on.

Benefits fraud, even at this scale, is absolutely nothing compared to how much money the country (us, the taxpayer) is haemorrhaging. It’s a brilliant story for the government though, we can all blame those foreigners again for the state of the country.

[turbobloke]

119 said:

Simpo Two said:

Our fault for (1) letting them in (2) giving them money.

Yeah but, yeah but…..

Freedom of movement fraud.

[turbobloke]

Chucky-egg said:

Patio said:

What are they likely to face? Banged up at our expense?

Bet most of the cash is now in Eastern Europe anyway...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-6877424...

Mistake they made was being commoners. £54m fraud is small change if you’re rich, bit of a sweetener to HMRC or an MP and you’re laughing.

I’d rather know where the £37bn for ‘track and trace’ went, plus all the multi-billions in useless PPE. Or a billion-by-billion breakdown of exactly what we’ve spent the HS2 money on.

Benefits fraud, even at this scale, is absolutely nothing compared to how much money the country (us, the taxpayer) is haemorrhaging. It’s a brilliant story for the government though, we can all blame those foreigners again for the state of the country.

Only if you take a long mental walk away from what happened and stretch it to a political snapping point. The T&T fiasco isn't connected to this case.

Benefits fraud is absolutely something and not even pointing at very costly squirrels over there will change that.

[Patio]

Reading into this our plod worked with Bulgarian authorities to close this down

The Bulgarians must have been laughing they're socks off that we created a system that enabled this to happen

"Ov corsh ve vill help you shtop millions of quid illegally landing in our country".....hmm

[whimsical ninja]

What were those orders given to the Hatton Garden burglars which said "pay back £Xm or get an extra few years inside"?

The sentencing guidelines are pretty straightforward for benefit fraud.

[Caddyshack]

ChocolateFrog said:

I often think if someone with a modest amount of intelligence applied themselves to crime they'd almost certainly get away with it.

Why not stop at a few million, or 10 million, or 30 million and sail off into the sunset?

I'm quite tempted personally, chance of being caught for a white collar crime, 1 in a million?

I have a friend who was educated at a £50k pa school, he is a very clever bloke but has served 20 years out of 2 15+ sentences.

He is now writing a book about his experiences as a cat A prisoner in Bellmarsh and the 9.5 million recovered under proceeds of crime…I think he got away with a lot but he didn’t get away with the big number crimes.

[Roman Moroni]

ChocolateFrog said:

I often think if someone with a modest amount of intelligence applied themselves to crime they'd almost certainly get away with it.

Why not stop at a few million, or 10 million, or 30 million and sail off into the sunset?

I'm quite tempted personally, chance of being caught for a white collar crime, 1 in a million?

Greed

[jondude]

mcflurry said:

I'd love to know how they got away with it for so long.
A few years ago my wife applied, they did what seemed like 101 checks before replying with a refusal..

They played the system as simply as possible. Sent in claims with fake papers but, crucially, removed any claims they felt were being questioned.

Hard not to think they had inside help as most of this money would be paid into fake bank accounts. Many thousands of bank accounts fraudulently opened. The gang have not even bothered to contest it. My guess is they feel 5 years max for 50 odd million is great work.

Comical to hear the benefits office spinning this as evidence they will not accept fraud and that we should thank them for a good job done.

[Hungrymc]

jondude said:

mcflurry said:

I'd love to know how they got away with it for so long.
A few years ago my wife applied, they did what seemed like 101 checks before replying with a refusal..

They played the system as simply as possible. Sent in claims with fake papers but, crucially, removed any claims they felt were being questioned.

News reports stated that they just kept resubmitting failed applications. And many went through at the 2nd or 3rd submission.

[dundarach]

Mabozza said:

"£54 mill benefits fraud - likely sentence?"

luxury yacht and peerage

Well I thought this was a brilliant response

And agreed, very limited custodial sentence and fine due to not having anything.