Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2013 19:01:02 GMT
Almost 70,000 blue badges and 100,000 bus passes have been confiscated as part of a huge drive to detect fraud by cross-checking official records.
The travel scams form part of more than £1billion found to have been lost to fraud by the Audit Commission’s National Fraud Initiative (NFI).
Since it was launched in 1996, the NFI has also detected 15,000 cases of pension overpayments worth £450million, over £250million of housing benefit overpayments as well as incorrectly awarded single person council tax discounts amounting to £160million.
The initiative compares data held by 1,300 public sector and 77 private sector organisations such as councils, the police, government departments and hospitals.
It aims to identify potentially fraudulent claims, errors and overpayments.
Where inconsistencies are found between two or more sets of data - for example, when data matching shows a person listed as dead also being in receipt of a pension - the relevant body will investigate and, if appropriate, stop pension payments.
So far, 68,736 blue badges and 97,361 concessionary travel passes have been cancelled as a result of investigations carried out by local authorities after the NFI raised concerns.
Around half of those motorists or travellers were caught during 2010/11, the most recent ‘matching’ period for which statistics are available.
During that time, 32,633 ‘disabled’ motorists and 52,635 bus travellers had their passes withdrawn.
They included a woman from Bromley, south London, who was convicted of fraud after she was found to have been using the blue badge belonging to her deceased mother. The woman was fined £181.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2295026/Fraud-probe-sees-70-000-blue-badges-100-000-bus-passes-confiscated.html
The travel scams form part of more than £1billion found to have been lost to fraud by the Audit Commission’s National Fraud Initiative (NFI).
Since it was launched in 1996, the NFI has also detected 15,000 cases of pension overpayments worth £450million, over £250million of housing benefit overpayments as well as incorrectly awarded single person council tax discounts amounting to £160million.
The initiative compares data held by 1,300 public sector and 77 private sector organisations such as councils, the police, government departments and hospitals.
It aims to identify potentially fraudulent claims, errors and overpayments.
Where inconsistencies are found between two or more sets of data - for example, when data matching shows a person listed as dead also being in receipt of a pension - the relevant body will investigate and, if appropriate, stop pension payments.
So far, 68,736 blue badges and 97,361 concessionary travel passes have been cancelled as a result of investigations carried out by local authorities after the NFI raised concerns.
Around half of those motorists or travellers were caught during 2010/11, the most recent ‘matching’ period for which statistics are available.
During that time, 32,633 ‘disabled’ motorists and 52,635 bus travellers had their passes withdrawn.
They included a woman from Bromley, south London, who was convicted of fraud after she was found to have been using the blue badge belonging to her deceased mother. The woman was fined £181.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2295026/Fraud-probe-sees-70-000-blue-badges-100-000-bus-passes-confiscated.html
