The UK’s Top Ten Benefit Scandals
- Thursday, May 14, 2009, 16:27
- 38 comments
Benefit cheats cost taxpayers an estimated £2.7 billion last year despite £154 million being spent by the government to tackle fraud within the system.
And taxpayers are outraged at the amount of money being misspent on benefit scroungers, with 600 calls being made to report cheats to the National Benefit Fraud hotline daily.
For the first time ever TotallyMoney.com has compiled a top ten of the Britain’s biggest benefit scandals. This lot cost the great British taxpayer a cool £44,413 of their hard earned cash every week, which is why we think they all richly deserve their place in our hall of shame.
The UK’s Top Ten Benefit Scandals:
1. Falinge, Rochdale – the ‘Benefits Capital of Britain’
Known as the ‘benefits capital of Britain’, Falinge, Rochdale is home to 1,141 people of working age – and only 651 of them hold down jobs. The rest of its inhabitants are supported by state benefits, with the majority of them ‘on the sick’, claiming incapacity benefits. Conditions that qualify for incapacity payments include alcoholism, stress and obesity. There are 2.6 million people in the UK claiming incapacity benefits for being too ill to work or seek employment; this accounts for 4.6% of the population. However 42.9% of Falinge residents rely on sick benefits – making Falinge the sickest place in Britain.
Cost to the UK taxpayer each week = £41,405
2. Hate cleric incites violence against the British while wife draws £680/week in benefits
Whilst on trial for terror charges, radical Islamic cleric and al-Quaeda supporter Abu Hamza received £1.1 million in state-funded legal aid to defend himself on charges that resulted in a conviction and imprisonment in 2004. Meanwhile, his wife and eight children were claiming £680 each week in state benefits, and living in a £550,000 council house, despite the fact Hazma owned another home in Acton, unbeknownst to the authorities. The house was sold while Hazma was in prison, and made him a £130,000 profit, despite his assets being frozen.
Cost to the UK taxpayer each week = £680
3. Benefits mother of 13 wants more children to avoid working
Since leaving school pregnant at the age of 16, Ellen Morris has had 13 children – and raised them all on benefit money. Now that some of her children have left home and the youngest is four, rather than thinking about finding work, Ms Morris is planning to have more children – so that the council will have to provide her with a six bedroom house, rent-free; and her benefit payments will rise to fund her 40 cigarette a day habit and her fondness for vodka and cokes. Ms Morris already receives £27,612 annually in benefits – to bring home that much money after tax, a worker would have to be on a salary of £37,500.
Cost to the UK taxpayer each week = £531
4. 80 stone family is ‘too fat to work’
The Chawner family, who have a combined weight of 80 stone, claim they are too big to work, and instead choose to live off an estimated £22,000 a year in benefits. Father Philip and Audrey have been unemployed for more than a decade due to obesity-related health problems; and despite having trained as hairdressers, neither daughter Samantha or Emma have been able to find work, as they claim they are discriminated against by potential employers due to their size. Emma says, ‘We’re the victims in all of this. It’s not our fault we can’t work. We’ve both applied for hundreds of jobs. It’s not our fault no one wants to employ fat people. Someone should be helping us, not accusing us.’ However, Emma refused a security job offer on live radio one month after making this statement because she didn’t like the sound of it, preferring to remain on benefits.
Cost to the UK taxpayer each week = £423
5. Couple made up 16 children in child benefit fraud
David Wilshaw, 58, and partner Nancy Stevenson, 59, invented 16 children in a benefit fraud scheme that yielded them over £75,000 over four years. The couple pocketed more than £400 a week for the fictitious children, blowing the money on a gambling addiction and alcohol abuse. After being jailed for fraud, Wilshaw claimed he had carried out a ‘public service’ in committing his crimes, by revealing the loopholes in the benefits system.
Cost to the UK taxpayer each week = £400
6. Mother leaves £1 million home for big issue seller
Catherine Scott, 18, originally moved out of her parents’ £1 million home at the age of 14 to have a baby with a Big Issue seller twice her age. She has now given birth to twins by a different father and wants even more benefit money, claiming that £16,000 a year is not enough to live on – despite this being close to what the average wage earner in the UK lives on. She is also demanding to be re-housed by the council in a more affluent area, because the three-bed housing association home in Margate they currently live in is inadequate: ‘We’re not being fussy but we don’t know anyone and there are 52 steps up to our front door. We also have to share the garden with six neighbours.’
Cost to the UK taxpayer each week = £307
7. 29-stone mother spends benefits funding child abuse
29-stone benefits mum, Leanne Salt, claims she is ‘too busy’ to feed her 8 month old triplets healthy food. Instead, she spends her child benefits and family allowance feeding them on a junk and fast-food diet including microwave lasagne, fish and chips, and McDonalds. Their diet is so high in calories that each toddler is consuming their recommended weekly calorie intake of 5,355 calories every four days – which could be called tantamount to child abuse. Leanne claims she feeds her children vegetables only once a week, for fear that healthy food will make them ‘anorexic’. Leanne says, ‘My babies were six months old when they had their first McDonald’s. They like fish and chips too. I chew the food first so they can eat it because they haven’t got any teeth yet’.
Cost to the UK taxpayer each week = £227
8. Strongest man in Cornwall claiming disability benefits
The winner of the Cornwall Strongman competition was a picture of health and strength when he won the 2007 annual competition. Jonathan Stentiford, from St Neots in Cornwall successfully completed a number of strength-display challenges, including lifting and holding up the end of a Mini Metro – winning the title and £300. Not bad for someone on disability benefits. At the time, Stentiford was illegally claiming £40,000 in disability payments, and had been over a four year period after failing to tell authorities that his condition had improved. He also held a job during a part of that time, but didn’t inform authorities of his employment for fear of losing his claim for housing and council tax benefits.
Cost to the UK taxpayer each week = £192
9. Benefit cheat on incapacity benefits was scuba diving in Kenya while ‘too sick to walk’
A British couple illegally claimed £40,000 in benefits while sailing round the world in a luxury £100,000 yacht. While claiming she was too sick to work – and even ‘too ill to get out of bed’ – Shashi Bacheta was in fact scuba diving in Kenya and swimming with dolphins in the Canary Islands. Her partner, Jeffery Cole, jointly claimed £13,000 in benefits with Bacheta, despite being able to purchase the lavish yacht with money he received as an inheritance.
Cost to the UK taxpayer each week = £128
10. Claiming benefits while sitting on a £550,000 goldmine
Asylum seeker Massoud Montazery claimed £25,000 in benefits after claiming to be penniless and escaping prosecution in his native Iran. In reality he had £550,000 in a secret bank account, drove a Mercedes Benz, dressed in designer clothes and also earned money illegally as a salesman for a babywear company.
Cost to the UK taxpayer each week = £120
Are you sick of seeing your taxes wasted on benefit scroungers? Have your say.
About the Author
Iva Marjanovic has written 157 stories on this site.
Iva also writes a very popular personal finance blog where she writes about frugal tips, debt-elimination plans and money saving ideas.
38 Comments on “The UK’s Top Ten Benefit Scandals”
Trackbacks
- surfurls.com
- pligg.com
- www.memeza.com
- Anonymous
- newsfinda.com
- BookMark-site.com
- www.webgare.com
- BookMark-site.com
Write a Comment
Gravatars are small images that can show your personality. You can get your gravatar for free today!
it is disturbing to know
Should I feel guilty for the resentment that surges on reading of non-contibutors to the system who receive a bigger handout than my government pension pays even before income tax?
Is it envy or outrage? I don’t know but I hope it’s contagious. When enough tax-payers feel the way I do then perhaps our newly chastened MPs, the nation’s swindle experts, will turn on the cheats
The people we have to blame for benefit cheats are not the people who cheat the system, but the people who regulate and control the benefits system. If the system is open to abuse it WILL be abused. Perhaps a little more money into investigating benefit claims? and less on MP’s expenses? The working taxpayer deserves to have their money spent wisely, I work full time and have 2 children. I do not get a penny towards my childcare as our joint earnings are above the threshold that allows it. We can not afford to go out at weekends anymore – Why should my money pay for the scroungers to drink , smoke and live in big houses!!
While it is true that poor regulation of the benefits system invites abuse, it is ridiculous to suggest that those who knowingly cheat the system are not to blame for their own actions. I agree that tighter control is necessary, but failures in the system do not excuse the actions of cheats and scroungers.
Number seven should be shot into space at the soonest opportunity. To be honest, the prejudice against people who draw social benefits is absurd, but if these cases are true, the government could probably do something about its evaluation system.
At least I know why i need to be in a 40% tax bracket
Makes you lot sick , well I work as a civil servant & have to watched this happen & to add insult to injury, i’m powerless to do anything about it !
Perhaps the fiddling british public have caught the thieving bug from the MP’s that run the country.. add the total of the thievery being claimed by these OVERPAID top wigsand see what this is costing the british taxpayer. dig deeper there will be more money scandals..
It’s truly appalling but I simply cannot work out how it can be happening. Not when my mother, who has 3 ruptured disks in her back, is unable to claim anything other than the bare minimum. Or me, who has always worked until recently developing a sever chronic illness cannot claim anything because my partner works full time, despite the fact that due to our rent and council tax we bring home less than what we would if my partner quit his job. So how are people managing to afford holidays and takeaways and social lives on benefits when I can’t even afford to choose to have chicken for my dinner instead of value mince??
I can see why they do it though, society values so little the people who work for minimum wage and if they work declare them uneligable for assistance when they genuinly need it, in times of sickness etc. So why would anyone bother? I know I’m losing the will to ever return to the working world again and I resent my partner going when really I should have a carer at home. And for what?? For him to pay tax and national insurance in to a system which refuses to help him when his wife is sick! Appalling!
This is unbelievable. They should all be rounded up and gassed. Not worth the air they breath.
im not surprised. some would say that these funds are necessarily recycled back into the capitalist system we live in. When the millions of faceless office drones scratch their ars&s doing nothing to progress humanity and get paid rather handsomely for it nobody says anything. these people are entrepeneurs of sorts.
To be honest with you, I think we need to revolutionise the benefit system.
We have all seen “I think I’m a celebrity, please put me back on tele” and “Big Brother” where they have been force to survive on rice and peas. I think that is all people on benefits should get. We continually give out hard currency to these lazy bums without any incentive to get themselves off the dole. I think we need to as such issue them with ration books to which they are only entitled to the bare minimum. This will give them the drive to get another job.
I know people are going to say “What about me? I have been putting into the system for years and now you are telling me I only have rice and peas…?” That won’t be the case. I think you will be entitled to have full benefits as they are today for 6 months after losing your job. You will then revert to the rice and peas. If you do get a job after being on the dole you will need to be in continues employment for 2 years before you are entitled to standard benefits (as they are now). This should avoid people taking a job for a week to go back to the current levels of benefit.
Just a thought…..
why is it big issue seller sell there mag and claim dss for sick when there out there in all weather making more money than and average worker does a week and get there sick benefit a 4night of about £180 there should be a stop to it if u want to sell big issue STOP claiming dss sick money Wolverhampton is one of the worst place for it as i know of a guy how sells the mag got shopped by the dss and gave them some bullshit and got away with it and is on a 45 pound a day habit and live at home no bills to pay at all as well come on dss get ur finger out and sort this shit out once and for all and save some money as if i was a dss officer would go around and check there not claiming as they do if u had a reall job and claimed dss
It disgusting how these people can rip off the system – they are as bad as the bankers. I have worked for 20 years and brought up 3 children – all who have a positive work ethic. If the woman who has had 13 children and wants more then she should pay for them herself. Benefit should be stopped after maybe 3 or 4 children – if you want a large family you pay for not the hard working people who struggle when working.
As for people who are overweight to work – stop their benefit its not an excuse.
We are such a gullible country and its the tax payer who has to keeping paying.
Maybe,… just maybe, China has got the solution !!! they execute people for fraud !!! perhaps if the mear threat were there it would concentrate would be claimants minds first….. all assuming there is a modicum of inteligence there in the first place,.. and hey, if not it would be a solution ….. YES !!!!!…. more homes vacated,… more money to reallocate etc… and lets go further… lets start with the MP’s first…. fraud is fraud is it not… no excuses !!!! soon pay off the national debt that way and get rid of flotsum and jetsum !!!!!!!!!! …. alas …. lets return to the real world……. its not going to happen…. IS IT ?????????
its our british goverment to blame they should employ more benefit investigators to catch these cheats out.i know many that are on benefits that claim carers allow and attendance allowances to look after their own family members.disgusting,aas i said thats our goverment for you.god help us honest hard working class people
If that chubba boy is anorexic then what the hell are we? The benefit system does not work and we are paying for them to sit on their ass pop out babies, eat mcdonalds, buy nice stuff. Well I have something to say about that Mr Gordon Brown!
My life is being destroyed by these ‘poor families’ that sit on their arses all day doing Bugar all!!! I do not live in a council house because I am not a gay fraud!!! I am also not a Chubba boy like that kid in the picture. I pay for exercise and they have the money to afford a personal trainer so why are they not having one coz that kid is fat! That vegetable crap is shizza, veggiues make you healthy not anorexic, and when will that kid ever be anorexic?
For goodness sake, we can all see it so why can’t the government. This is nothing short of fraud so jail sentences should be compulsory. Jail should revert back to jail not the holiday camp it is today and immigrants shold not be entitled to ANY benefits until they have worked and paid taxes for five years. Alternatively, give them all a lethal injection after all they are no good to man nor beast, they sponge and take off society and give nothing in return.
I am sick to death of people claiming benefit because they can get more money than by working, the benefit system should have been changed years ago so that they were financially worse off on benefits. They shouldn’t expect to be housed in bigger and better properties, if they want more children, fine but let them continue to live in the same property and if it becomes overcrowded it is their problem not the housing authorities. These measures would also hopefully stop some of the immigrants coming to this country.
I think your being a bit harsh, what about there human rights, they have got to live as well
No hard working person likes a scrounger but you cannot tar everyone with the same brush. I have just been made redundant and hopefully will get a job but with over 100 people applying for every vacancie and I am over 50 it ’s probably not going to be easy. Last time I was unemployed it took 5 months to find a job and resisted signing on for over 4 months but got totally desperate. I only got about 54 pounds a week and was then asked to pay it back when I got a job ? despite the fact I had no money for months. My partner has worked for 39 years with just a few odd spells of unemployment in recent times he was unable to claim anything and got into serious debt. There was no rhyme or reason to it. You would think that with modern technology that THEY could look at your work record and contributions to see if you are usually employed instead it is made extremely difficult for those that do not know how to work the system and deserve a bit of help.
Execute them. Line them up in front of a trench, one shot each in the back of the head. Job done. I’d do it – wouldn’t cause me to lose a moments sleep at night.
Beats having it wasted on corrupt company like A4E
I lived abroad for 3 years and this goverment does not even check on spongers in spain we commented to the dss and gave names about the amount of people living on benefits who are all able to work and do work and on top of this live the life many people in england would love to have all because they are able to draw invalidity benefits because nobody checks on them this goverment waste thousands on spongers and do nothing about it at all even when provided with the evidence.
6o years ago “benefits” were what you needed not money.
As children we went to the Co-Op to get our yearly clothes allocation.
40 years ago if you had no work you went to the Labour Exchange to get work every working day. If no work was available you could claim benefits. If you didn’t go to the Labour Exchange you got no benefits.
Then to save money, don’t laugh, you only needed to go to the Labour Exchange once a week to register and get your money.
Then they sent you your money and you just went there on your prescribed day and hour. Now it was easy to get a job on the LUMP.
Then you could just phone a say you were unwell if you were stuck on your “private job” or claim you could afford the fare.
Then it was obvious that people were going there from work and then going back to work not even bothering to take off their working clothes.
I knew someone who got caught working 3 times and each time he said he was working for nothing. Nothing happened to him. There was 2m job vacancies and he was a fit 24 year old.
I had a chap who worked for me who went on the dole (often). I phoned him up and offered him some work. How long for, he asked. Like last time I said. Two weeks and could end up two years again. Can you guarantee me at least 14 weeks he asked. I said no. He said it’s not worth me coming off benefits then. That was about 15-20 years ago. 25 or so years ago I had a chap who reluctantly stopped working for me. His wife was pregnant and having lots of trouble which caused him to lose a days work each week. He travelled 25 miles to work (50 a day). He said I’m sorry but I cant afford to work. If I go on benefits and work one day private I will be better off. That’s what he did.
The system stinks and no one responsible for paying out the benefits could care how much and to whom. There is no help to help those in need but all the help to help the feckless and lazy.
Particularly with this government, who depend on their votes, expect no change for the better.
We pay benefits to millions who have put nothing into the pot including 100,000s not even been in the country and including millions of foreigners. But you try getting something if you have worked most of your life??????
Good luck to anybody who screws whatever they can out of this shit hole country, I know of quite a lot of people who are claiming everything they can, and then some, and yep, they are working cash in hand too.I wouldnt ever report anybody. This dump of a country is nevery going to give anything to the resident population , in fact, the working man is there for one reason, to be robbed blind by the goverment. Regardless of how many years you have worked, contributed to society and basically avoided being anything of a burden on the economy, you will be robbed to pay for immigrants, prisons, overpaid politicians and do gooders. This government is that stupid and naive they actually think that by encouraging us to inform on illegal benefit claims that we will somehow benefit from the monies they save from this. Dont fool yourselfs, wake up, look at the state of the country, any monies saved would be going straight into the pockets of the corrupt dirt that run this country. If I have offended anybody, I apologize, on a personal level. Just wake up, start questioning everything you are told.
A year ago, I was made redundant after being with a company for 20yrs. This is my first experience of benefits and at the age of 59, I found it extremely daunting and humiliating. At least I can hold my head up and claim to have paid my share into the system. I agree that anybody defrauding the system should be punished but I must say that if these people have found a way to swindle the system so successfully, perhaps they should be employed to prevent it. Further, perhaps the anger directed at benefit fraudsters, would be better placed directed at the banks for the most succesful robbery of taxpayers money ever perpetrated, without this time, even involving a world war. Please study how banks can create money from nothing by the creation of loans, and then steal YOUR money to replace these ‘debts’ if they are in default. THis made you and I guaranteurs of all the sub-prime loan gambling and how it could be done with no risk to the financial institutions. As this payout, as last I heard it, was circa £147bn, cost to taxpayers is so much that your great granchildren will stil be paying it off. Please level blame at the real criminals in this ‘cost to taxpayer’, and bear in mind that thanks to the demonstation of power shown by the banks to blackmail the world to comply in this robbery, so many more innocent people are now ‘Benefit Scroungers’. Just hope that you are not next ‘out of the door’ because it really will ruin your bigotted day!
This shows why we need to get Labour out of government, becuase this has been going on all the time they have been in power, and the poor get poorer.Vote Conservative, and get these benefit cheats out, David Cameron has promised a clampdown on benefit cheats, so get voting tommmorrow for Cameron.
I receive company pension after working full time for 38 years and on which I pay tax. Will receive state pension in July which will increase the tax I pay. During the last 20 years of my employment I cared for both seriously ill parents with no help from anybody. Juggling work and caring for my parents was extremely hard but I had to work. I get far less than the benefit scroungers so why is the money they receive not classed as TAXABLE INCOME like mine is. I pay all my bills plus the benefit scroungers bills. They should GIVE THE SCROUNGERS VOUCHERS FOR EVERYTHING INSTEAD OF MONEY. The estate I live on has been renamed to BENEFIT CITY. Perhaps the workers of this country and the taxpayers should give up working and see how long the country would last without us paying our taxes. They should be forced to contribute to society or lose all the taxpayers money they keep getting.