The York Councils anti fraud investigators have completed 164 investigations so far in the current financial year. 48% have resulted in a “successful outcome” (for example benefit stopped or amended, sanctions, prosecutions, properties recovered, housing allocations blocked, management action taken).

Activity to date includes the following:

• Benefit Fraud – 14 people have been prosecuted for benefit fraud offences and a further 10 have received formal sanctions (cautions and administrative penalties). Benefits have been corrected in a further 50 cases.

• Housing Fraud – working in conjunction with housing officers, 15 properties have been recovered in 2012/13. In addition, 2 properties were prevented from being let where the prospective tenants had provided fraudulent information in their housing applications. There are 30 current investigations in this area. City of York Council successfully prosecuted a tenant for subletting this summer. This was only the third such prosecution of this type in thecountry.

• Internal Fraud – the team has received 9 referrals for internal frauds to date. 5 are currently under investigation.

• Social Care Fraud – fraud awareness has been delivered to frontline staff and processes setup for the referral of cases where abuse of the system is suspected. There are currently 7 ongoing investigations in this area.

• Blue Badge Fraud – fraud awareness is currently being undertaken with relevant staff. In October the council prosecuted a member of the public for offences under the Road Traffic Act.

• Council Tax Fraud – there are three ongoing investigations into criminal offences relating to the evasion of council tax.

More details here: http://tinyurl.com/York-Fraud