Council succeeds in anti-fraud clampdown
Feb 21 2012
Categories: Data Fraud And Error
Hundreds of people in Staffordshire have been found to have been cheating the system after a council launched a huge clampdown on fraud.
Stoke-on-Trent City Council opted to carry out a period of data cleansing in which it sought to expose those who were pocketing public cash without justification for doing so.
According to figures obtained by the Sentinel, more than 200 people have been prosecuted after anti-fraud work by the local authority, with 36 being sentenced to a prison term.
Such work allows people like James Boyce, 60, to be exposed, as he was recently when the Yorkshire Post reported on his appearance at Leeds Magistrates' Court in which he was found to have claimed benefit while sitting on a bank account worth £90,000.
In Stoke, some 1,421 individuals were discovered to be claiming a single person's discount on council tax last year although they were not entitled to it, while housing benefit fraud is also on the rise.
