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Overpayment- Disclosure to relevant office?
I have a client that misrepresented on a IS claim form that he had no capital when in fact he had £40k. He has been prosecuted for fraud and has accepted this. My enquiry is in relation to the period of the recoverable overpayment.
In March 08 he was invited to an interview under caution in his local Social Security Office (office that pays IS). Here he was informed that there will be two people, usually from the Security Office that will interview him. He disclosed 2 undeclared bank accounts and agreed to return 2 weeks later with the details.
March 08: Two weeks later he disclosed (under interview in the local office) the extent of his capital (£40k) and explained he spent £7k in Jan ‘07.
Sept 08: 6 months later he was cautioned (again in the local office.)
He continued to receive benefit throughout this period and payment did not cease until December 08.
Client believes he made disclosure of the capital to his local office that administered his benefit in March 08 and doesn’t accept the overpayment is recoverable up to December 08. He did not know that the information provided in his local office was to BIS officers from another office in another city and would not be passed to the relevant section until December 08.
Anyone have any thoughts?
The Fraud Investigators are clearly acting on behalf of the “paying office” (even if they are not based in the same building). Ergo, disclosure for s 71 purposes is effective from the date they know.
In many cases of undeclared capital or employment, the date of disclosure may well be sooner - for example, the date when an employer returns evidence is inevitably before the IUC, a data match may well contain enough evidence of disclosure of accounts, etc.
In this case, it sounds like the IUC is the date when disclosure takes place.
I’ve seen many OP decisions which end on the date an IUC takes place.
Has a diminution of capital calculation been done by DWP?
Now, tell me. Do some fraud investigators deliberately not ask for benefit to be suspended in such circumstances so that they can report a bigger level of fraud through the Monetary Value Adjustment they record? Or is it just a wholly innocent oversight caused by their lack of familiarity with the rules they are investigating breaches of?
On a slightly different tack, the original post mentions that the claimant made a misrepresentation rather than a failure to disclose (although the misrepresentation did involve a failure to disclose in the ordinary sense). So if the DWP go down the misrepresentation route then the claimant quite obviously qualified the misrepresentation to DWP officers investigating his claim so there can be no recovery on this ground after that date.
“My guess would be mostly the latter. I’ve attended IUC’s and read IUC transcripts where the fraud investigators clearly demonstrate their ignorance of, for example, the entitlement conditions, income/capital rules and administration rules/procedures”.
Begs the question, how they can investigate an offence when they don’t understand the rules of entitlement. This is actually an observation made in the DWP Fraud Procedures and Instructions Manual.
Begs the question, how they can investigate an offence when they don’t understand the rules of entitlement. This is actually an observation made in the DWP Fraud Procedures and Instructions Manual.
well they do it all the time….as we know ... hence all the issues around criminal convictions that shouldn’t have happened, etc..
Begs the question did he know the £40k would affect his claim?