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Strange earnings reported to client UC account

aranhe
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Royal British Legion

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Total Posts: 7

Joined: 5 September 2016

Client has one employer - he is working as a pizza delivery driver earning around £750-800 pm. Those earnings are correctly reported.
UC statement, however,  is reporting earnings from 2 additional employers. The total earnings reported amount to between £1500 and £2000 per month which reduce the amount of UC received.
2 unknown companies reporting earnings are SRASB Management Ltd and Google Key Ltd . Both are in London, one of them is a dormant company.
The unknown earnings have been appearing on his UC statement from 27/4/21 to now but client does not have English as first language and has only just realised.
I previously advised him to report to Action Fraud and contact UC and HMRC as well as asking for a new NI number,  but cl has returned and says he is being bounced from UC to HMRC and back again with neither taking ownership of his complaint. He does have an Action Fraud number.

I am about to look into somehow escalating this to HMRC on the client’s behalf but I wondered if anyone else has come across something so strange and knows who I should contact? The client isn’t being directly defrauded, but because of the reports that he receives earnings from these companies, he is obviously out of pocket in terms of the UC he receives.

HB Anorak
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Benefits consultant/trainer - hbanorak.co.uk, East London

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Given that those companies were incorporated in 2020 I suspect this is furlough fraud: someone with access to your client’s name and NINO is creating a false audit trail to support claims for Government Covid funding.  There is a lot of it about.

The person named as director and sole shareholder of G****** K** is associated with another company that has a suspiciously similar name to S**** Management so it seems safe to assume these people are associates of one another.

Sorry cannot offer any practical hints to break the impasse, except tp ensure that there is a formal MR on the UC side so that the client’s position is protected however long it takes to sort out.

PS - might be an idea to anonymise the companies

[ Edited: 10 Dec 2021 at 04:05 pm by HB Anorak ]
MaggieB
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Dorchester CAB

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Joined: 11 October 2010

We had a similar case during lockdown.  Client worked for one week for employer and then laid off but employer continued to submit false RTI information (not paying the client) and kept furlough pay.  It took a year to resolve and the client was bounced between HMRC and DWP despite employer being reported to furlough fraud team.
The way the matter was resolved was to escalate within JCP and get case referred to RTI dispute team and once I managed to speak to someone (extremely helpful) in HMRC RTI disputes team things did move
fyi though at one point DWP said they had closed RTI dispute as they “hadn’t been able to contact the employer..” (duh) which is likely to be the case here.
We were promised at the time that “senior management” in both DWP and HMRC were working to improve communication to prevent the game of ping pong
Good luck!