A COUNTER-FRAUD team has identified more than £250,000 in illegal benefits claims across Dundee.
The city council unit is responsible for checking allegations people in Dundee have received housing benefit and council tax benefit to which they are not entitled.
Some claimants have made mistakes but others have knowingly cheated the system.
Figures for the first nine months of 2012/13 show the counter-fraud team had completed 213 investigations, with 85 of them resulting in someone having their benefit reduced or stopped completely.
More than £450,000 in benefit overpayments were identified.
Investigations found some of this had been claimed in error but fraudulent claims accounted for £253,000 of the total.
A range of sanctions is open to the council and the Department for Works and Pensions in dealing with overpayments. The most serious offenders can be referred to the procurator fiscal for possible prosecution.
Marjory Stewart, Dundee City Council’s director of corporate services, said: “The number of successful prosecutions has increased significantly in comparison to previous years.
“This can be attributed to a number of factors, such as the higher quality of investigative work and standard prosecution reports reported to the procurator fiscal and the fiscal’s willingness to take action against benefit fraudsters.”
There were 35 cases referred to the procurator fiscal, compared to 21 the previous year. These resulted in 25 guilty verdicts, well ahead of the target of 15 for the whole year.
In the first three quarters of 2012/13, the team were able to get 62% of benefit overpayments repaid in full. Another 10% was being dealt with by automatic deductions from continuing payments. There were also 853 potential cases sent to the counter-fraud team for consideration.
grsmith@thecourier.co.uk