Furlough fraud 1st case

Author
Discussion

Algarve

2,102 posts

82 months

Sunday 12th July 2020
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gottans said:
I wonder what the punishment will be, slap on wrist or something really painful. Personally I think the latter as the scheme was put in place to help in a desperate situation and we should all be angry at people abusing it.
The punishments for issues related to the Grenfell fire fund seemed to be higher than the £ amount would have normally seen.

5.5 years for a female stealing £60k seemed higher than you'd normally get. https://news.sky.com/story/the-fraudsters-who-took...

Steal a similar amount in regular old fashioned benefit fraud and its no jail time - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-berkshire-4690...

I suspect a handful of people are going to feel the pain from these blatant frauds when it all comes out in the wash. No doubt it'll only be a tiny % that get hit but I'm fully expecting prison sentences. Hopefully they'll come down hard on the blatant scammers here.

xjay1337

15,966 posts

119 months

Sunday 12th July 2020
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mike74 said:
There was an article back at the start of lockdown featuring an airline pilot on furlough who had gone working as a supermarket home delivery driver, the article was praiseworthy of his ''can do'' attitude and he was even quoted as saying he was doing it just to keep himself busy as much as anything.

So not only are taxpayers paying 80% of his existing very high salary he's also earning more money elsewhere and depriving someone with possibly no income at all of the opportunity of much needed work.

Edited by mike74 on Sunday 12th July 15:06
Heaven forbid - look for work and you get it ....

He took initiative to boost his income


Btw if a Pilot earns say 90k a year going to effectively 35k a year is not doable.

You live how you earn and you assume a pilot is fairly safe job.

Eric Mc

122,043 posts

266 months

Sunday 12th July 2020
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mike74 said:
Fair point, I forgot that bit, still getting £2.5k a month furlough money and then depriving other people with no income at all of a minimum wage job is not on in my book.
You are missing the point. The encouragement is for the EMPLOYER to keep him on - not to give him money.

mike74

3,687 posts

133 months

Sunday 12th July 2020
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xjay1337 said:
Btw if a Pilot earns say 90k a year going to effectively 35k a year is not doable.
Of course it's doable, he simply has to liquidate some of his no doubt substantial assets that he will have accumulated whilst earning £90k and downsize appropriately.

I believe it's called cutting your cloth accordingly.



anonymous-user

Original Poster:

55 months

Sunday 12th July 2020
quotequote all
mike74 said:
Of course it's doable, he simply has to liquidate some of his no doubt substantial assets that he will have accumulated whilst earning £90k and downsize appropriately.

I believe it's called cutting your cloth accordingly.
Aren't most pilots in massive debts?

Would be great if life could be distilled down to so simplistic thinking, but it rarely does in reality.

Edited by anonymous-user on Sunday 12th July 16:15

Eric Mc

122,043 posts

266 months

Sunday 12th July 2020
quotequote all
mike74 said:
Of course it's doable, he simply has to liquidate some of his no doubt substantial assets that he will have accumulated whilst earning £90k and downsize appropriately.

I believe it's called cutting your cloth accordingly.
You seem to be making wild and silly assumptions.

gregs656

10,899 posts

182 months

Sunday 12th July 2020
quotequote all
mike74 said:
Of course it's doable, he simply has to liquidate some of his no doubt substantial assets that he will have accumulated whilst earning £90k and downsize appropriately.

I believe it's called cutting your cloth accordingly.
If I was on furlough and my employer allowed it I would have got a job ASAP, who knows what the future holds and it must have been a concerning time for lots of people not knowing if they had a job to go back to.

I believe the govt even encouraged people to take jobs fruit picking and so on if their agreement allowed for it.

We shouldn’t criticise people for working.

xjay1337

15,966 posts

119 months

Sunday 12th July 2020
quotequote all
The Spruce Goose said:
mike74 said:
Of course it's doable, he simply has to liquidate some of his no doubt substantial assets that he will have accumulated whilst earning £90k and downsize appropriately.

I believe it's called cutting your cloth accordingly.
Aren't most pilots in massive debts?

Would be great if life could be distilled down to so simplistic thinking, but it rarely does in reality.

Edited by The Spruce Goose on Sunday 12th July 16:15
Yes quite, very simplistic way of looking at it.

Most pilots have a lot of debt from their training.

Plus given you are away from home for long periods if you have a wife and kid then likelyhood the wife doesn't work or earn a lot (assuming pilot is male here).

He might have a nice car which let's assume has finance and a mortgage.

What other assets do you imagine your average person has? Maybe a small amount of stock for his company, which has tanked so are worthless.

Selling a car isn't really a way to get cash as then they have no family car any more

Selling your house? Really?

He avoided having to "liquidate some of his no doubt substantial assets" by getting further gainful employment to top up his no doubt hugely reduced income.

But of course, someone (virtue signalling no doubt) says "oh you can't do that because you are furloughed and that stops someone else getting a job".

Ridiculous.

Corvid-2020

1,994 posts

80 months

Sunday 12th July 2020
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mr_spock said:
Eric Mc said:
Many low paid workers hold down more than one employment at a time. If they are furloughed but not the other, the government felt, correctly, that they should not suffer a loss of income if one employer had no work for them and therefore couldn't pay them.
The furlough scheme is on an employment by employment basis, not an employee basis.

The whole point of the scheme was to prevent mass redundancies. Whether all it has done is just defer that outcome we shall see,
Out of interest, would there be anything to prevent an employee of company A being furloughed but then working for company B which is owned by the same holding company, with company B charging company A for the services?
I'm pretty sure my tree surgeons cancelled from March that did the work in May did, or tried to do something like this. Changed company names but not staff. I'm pretty sure I've paid properly and got my invoice / VAT receipt but it certainly raised a few Qs and they were supposed to do some of the neighbours trees but they have now disappearanced!

Meanwhile, the guy that services my Aga, can't until at least October as he is 'furloughing under social distancing rules' himself 'can't even do the job as a favour mate for cash, gotta comply with Government rules, I'm a bit vunerable mate'. Seemed to be quite happy in the pub garden next to the A49 last weekend though with his works van in the car park!

If anyone knows a gas Aga service engineer (not tied to Aga itself) near Crewe let me know.



xjay1337

15,966 posts

119 months

Sunday 12th July 2020
quotequote all
Corvid-2020 said:
Meanwhile, the guy that services my Aga, can't until at least October as he is 'furloughing under social distancing rules' himself 'can't even do the job as a favour mate for cash, gotta comply with Government rules, I'm a bit vunerable mate'. Seemed to be quite happy in the pub garden next to the A49 last weekend though with his works van in the car park!
Sounds like a knob head.

J4CKO

41,608 posts

201 months

Sunday 12th July 2020
quotequote all
Corvid-2020 said:
mr_spock said:
Eric Mc said:
Many low paid workers hold down more than one employment at a time. If they are furloughed but not the other, the government felt, correctly, that they should not suffer a loss of income if one employer had no work for them and therefore couldn't pay them.
The furlough scheme is on an employment by employment basis, not an employee basis.

The whole point of the scheme was to prevent mass redundancies. Whether all it has done is just defer that outcome we shall see,
Out of interest, would there be anything to prevent an employee of company A being furloughed but then working for company B which is owned by the same holding company, with company B charging company A for the services?
I'm pretty sure my tree surgeons cancelled from March that did the work in May did, or tried to do something like this. Changed company names but not staff. I'm pretty sure I've paid properly and got my invoice / VAT receipt but it certainly raised a few Qs and they were supposed to do some of the neighbours trees but they have now disappearanced!

Meanwhile, the guy that services my Aga, can't until at least October as he is 'furloughing under social distancing rules' himself 'can't even do the job as a favour mate for cash, gotta comply with Government rules, I'm a bit vunerable mate'. Seemed to be quite happy in the pub garden next to the A49 last weekend though with his works van in the car park!

If anyone knows a gas Aga service engineer (not tied to Aga itself) near Crewe let me know.
I found reading his post was best served using the voice Penelope Keith.

Eric Mc

122,043 posts

266 months

Sunday 12th July 2020
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As Margot Leadbetter, no doubt.

XCP

16,927 posts

229 months

Monday 13th July 2020
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Kiribati268 said:
XCP said:
I am amazed that it is allowed. Someone who is furloughed comes into another industry and takes money out of the pockets of longstanding employees in that industry whilst receiving money from the government to do so. It is causing great resentment where I work.
What if said person is building up experience and contacts as they expect they will never return from furlough, and waiting for the redundancy before looking for alternatives would be pretty negligent for themselves and their own financial situation?

To be pedantic, employees on furlough are not receiving anything from the government, they are being paid 80-100% of their salary from the employer. The employer claims this back from the government. Furlough money administratively is nothing to do with the employee. The government are paying companies as an incentive to reduce redundancies until demand picks up.

I'm amazed it's allowed, but it was put together so quickly that the details couldn't be done in time, so banning any other work would have hit people that *need* the second income much harder than those that are milking the bonus money.
Well the individual I know is taking the piss. False overtime claims and taking work away from long standing employees therefore reducing their earnings. It is due to execrable standards of management in my opinion. However it will backfire when the disgruntled employees walk out, as may happen. Interesting times indeed.

Pit Pony

8,612 posts

122 months

Monday 13th July 2020
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Andeh1 said:
Won't be hard, any disgruntled employee working or having evidence of being asked to work... subtle report to HMRC. Easy conviction.
You wait until you've been made redundant first..