When we think about fraud, we usually initially associate the term with wealthy business men dodging the tax system, international crime syndicates, or hardened criminals and conmen, but the real fact is the majority of fraud incidents carried out in Australia is from everyday people, and even public servants.
We don’t usually consider common people, would rort the syste
m to a large extent, but in fact over $600 million a year is being ripped off by public servants and novice tax rorters, with welfare cheater amongst the worst offenders.
As thousands of Australian families struggle to make ends meet, usually due to poor financial choices such as spending over their means, having more children than they could budget for, or other reasons, they are choosing the easy option of cheating the welfare system to stay afloat, costing the honest Australians billions of dollars in additional taxes over the next decade to counteract the loss due to their fraudulent activities.
The situation is so bad that in one year over 800,000 incidents of welfare fraud were reported by Centrelink, costing the Australian welfare system over $489 million. A rise of 10 percent up from the previous year, and the problem has no end in sight.
Other groups, including Medicare, have also experienced major fraudulent activities, with over 1270 cases of people wrongly claiming benefits.
A majority of the fraud was being committed by the younger people ripping off the dole, and single mothers on parent benefits, being the biggest and most costly groups of fraud criminals.
And it’s not only the single mums and unemployed you getting in on the schemes to rip off the government. An alarming rate of crooked public servants are also earning their stake with over $1.89 million of internal fraud reported in 12 months. Much of this involves mis-use of credit cards by senior bureaucrats or public servants obtaining personal information without authorisation, in order to rort the system.
With the government committed to cracking down on these all too common white collar crimes in Australia, in many cases like those mentioned it takes professional investigation services to track down and carry out surveillance on the individuals in order to reduce the cost to the taxpayer on what seems to be a growing trend across the country.
Services such as Suncoast PI, provide professional surveillance and investigation services to individuals and business owners, as well as government organisations, to help trace and eliminate fraud, to protect your business assets
The Suncoast PI staff have the professional knowledge and experience required to catch fraudsters in the act, saving your company possibly thousands in loss revenue or insurance protection.
So when it comes to business fraud, talk to the leading Sunshine Coast investigators at Suncoast PI.