Ali/ Clarke Saints and Scroungers

Saints And Scroungers puts the spotlight on benefit thieves -

those who ruthlessly steal millions of pounds every year from the British taxpayer.

We also search out the saints - people who help

put unclaimed cash into the hands of those who really deserve it.

Saints And Scroungers is all about busting benefit thieves

who steal millions every year, and the crack team of investigators

determined to scupper their devious scams.

We also shine a light on those who genuinely need the money

and the people who help them get it.

They are our saints.

The saints get help and the fraudsters get their comeuppance.

Coming up on today's show...

a scrounger who doesn't declare his savings and uses money

that you pay in taxes to help him get on the property ladder.

It's likely that some of the money used to purchase the property came from the benefits system.

This is a serious and calculated fraud

that went on for a number of years.

And a single mother who reaches rock bottom.

I thought I'd be homeless in three months flat.

Will someone help her get the financial support she's entitled to?

Looking at the form

and having to admit that my child was that disabled was heartbreaking.

If you've got no job, no income, and a large family to support,

you may be able to claim benefits. But if you've got savings in the bank,

you might not be entitled to as much money, if anything at all.

Some people think they can have their cake and eat it -

leave their nest egg earning interest, whilst still living off benefits,

paid for, of course, by the taxpayer.

Meet Shahzad Ali, a 36-year-old man.

He has a wife and six children to provide for,

but he's disabled and can't work, and to make matters worse,

three of his children are also disabled.

So Mr Ali has been claiming income support

from the Department for Work and Pensions

for at least ten years,

plus housing and council tax benefit from the London Borough of Newham.

But a tip-off from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs put his claims in doubt.

He was suspected of defrauding the system

of almost £174,000 worth of benefits.

And Newham Council weren't going to let him get away with it.

Their counter fraud manager, Emma Vick, is in charge of the case.

The Department for Work and Pensions does data-matching exercises

with other government agencies and departments, including the Inland Revenue.

Data matching does exactly what it says it does.

It compares data stored on different computers by different data controllers to see if they match.

In this case, the Inland Revenue had information that Mr Ali

was getting large amounts of interest paid into bank accounts,

which would indicate that he had savings.

The Department for Work and Pensions weren't aware of the accounts,

and when they received the information, they started the investigation.

And rightly so, because if you have savings, you have to declare them,

so the Department for Work and Pensions

decided to take a closer look at Mr Ali's claims for benefits,

and see what information he had provided.

The DWP pulled out all of Mr Ali's claim forms

and established that he'd been claiming benefits

since at least December 2002 up to February 2009.

He was claiming income support at a rate of between £127 a week

and £346 a week throughout that period.

If Mr Ali can't work because he has a disability, very few savings,

and no visible means of supporting himself and his family,

he's entitled to income support.

No problem - that's what it's there for.

Mr Ali also stated he was disabled on his claim forms,

and so he was entitled to receive disability living allowance.

He got that at varying amounts that ranged between £95 a week and £119 a week.

Again, that's what's great about Great Britain.

The disability living allowance is there for those who need it.

Mr Ali also stated he had a dependent wife

and six children living with him at the claim address.

Three of his children were also disabled, so, in addition,

he was getting disability living allowance for those children.

So Mr Ali was claiming income support and disability living allowance

from the Department for Work and Pensions.

Further investigations showed that he was also claiming

housing and council tax benefit from the London Borough of Newham.

The housing benefit he was claiming was to cover the rent of a four-bedroom property

that he shared with his wife and children in Newham.

He received between £310 a week at the beginning

to £369 a week towards the end of the claim period.

In addition to that, he received between £16 and £20 council tax benefit as well per week.

Well, it looks like Mr Ali has had a pretty tough time of it.

If you can't work because you're disabled,

but you still have to provide for your wife and six children,

three of whom are also disabled, what are you going to do?

And surely these are exactly the sort of people our benefits system is there to help.

And in Mr Ali's case, the benefits system had helped him

to the tune of at least £174,000 since 2002.

But was he entitled to the money?

Mr Ali's claims that he and his children were disabled was never in doubt.

He had medical documentation to back up his claims,

and he was entitled to receive disability living allowance

for both himself and his children.

His claims for income support, housing benefit

and council tax benefit

gave the Department for Work and Pensions, and Newham Council,

cause for concern.

During the life of a benefit claim, the claimant is required to notify us

of any changes in their circumstances,

and they'll be sent renewal forms to complete and send back to us.

At no point during his claim did Mr Ali declared that he had any savings

or indeed that the interest on them was accumulating.

This contradicted the findings of the data-matching exercise

which led to the original tip-off.

They flagged up that Mr Ali was earning interest from different bank accounts.

It was time to dig a little deeper.

Rashid Dipul, a senior fraud investigator at Newham Council,

takes up the case.

As the DWP data match had identified several accounts

in which interest was being accrued, it was up to us then

to basically approach the banks and ask them for statements

for all these accounts, in order to ascertain how much money Mr Ali had.

Rashid and the Department for Work and Pensions

had their work cut out for them

because there were quite a few accounts to investigate.

The information passed to the DWP by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs

showed that Mr Ali actually had five undeclared accounts with the Halifax.

Through the course of the investigation,

four more accounts with the Abbey were discovered,

as well as a further account with NatWest.

That's ten undeclared bank accounts!

And when Rashid went through the statements with a fine-tooth comb,

he made a shocking discovery.

Once we received the statements from the banks and building societies,

we were able to see movement of a lot of money throughout these accounts.

In this instance here, the statements from the Halifax

showed that early on in the claim, say, for instance, in 2002 to 2003,

there were large receipts of cash payments into one of his accounts.

Here we have a receipt of £6,400 cash from June 2003,

and only a few months later, in September 2003,

a further payment of cash of £5,200 into his account.

Cash payments of £6,400 one day,

and £5,200 another?!

And that was just the Halifax account.

Newham Council could smell a rat, and they were going to track it down.

Because, although you're allowed to have some savings if you're on benefits, there is a limit.

Benefit regulations state that anybody who's on benefits

can have savings up to £6,000 and your benefit won't be affected at all.

Between 6,000 and 16,000 is a sliding scale,

with the more savings you have reducing the amount of benefit you'll receive.

If you have over £16,000 in savings,

you're not entitled to receive benefits.

Any guesses as to how much Mr Ali had in his various savings accounts?

10 grand?

20 grand?

Maybe 50 grand?

You're not even close!

Mr Ali had at least £100,000.

And at no point did he declare these savings to Newham Council

or the Department for Work and Pensions,

or notify them of a change of circumstances.

The only account Mr Ali ever declared was the Post Office account

into which his income support payments were received.

Throughout his claim until we started the investigation,

we had no idea he had any other bank accounts.

It was time to get Mr Ali in for questioning,

because, if he'd been fraudulently claiming benefits since 2002,

he had effectively stolen almost £174,000.

But would he give the council the answers they needed?

We've already established you had sufficient savings

that you should have told us about. Why did you not tell us about that?

But for now, it's farewell to the fraudsters

and hello to the people we call our saints -

those who are in genuine need of help but are too proud,

or don't know how to claim what is rightly theirs,

and the people who point them in the right direction.

You work hard, you pay your taxes, and you think your future is secure.

But life has a funny way of tripping you up

when you least expect it, and sometimes it can be pretty scary.

When Laura Clarke discovered her daughter was deaf,

-she was devastated.

-I just thought, "What's going to happen to my child?

"She's not going to be educated, there's just no hope."

Unable to return to part-time work as a nurse,

Laura was living off the last of her savings,

and her daughter was living in a world of silence.

Although Laura was no longer in a relationship with Poppy's father,

he was still emotionally and physically involved in his daughter's life.

But he couldn't help out financially because he'd been signed off work.

So Laura was facing a frightening and uncertain future

as a single mum in Dorset.

Things had got pretty bad.

I thought I was going to be homeless in three months flat.

Laura needed emotional and financial support,

so she took the advice of Poppy's audiologist

and called the National Deaf Children's Society.

The first thing they did was arrange for a local family officer

to visit Laura in her home and find out whether she was entitled to benefits.

The family officer came round,

chatted to Glen and I about what benefits I could be on,

what benefits I was entitled to with Poppy being disabled.

I didn't feel that happy

at having disability living allowance,

because I didn't want to have a disabled daughter.

But she said, "You do, and that's what it's for."

Laura took one look at the form

and realised she didn't have the emotional strength to fill it out.

Looking at the form and having to admit

that my child was that disabled was heartbreaking.

And I couldn't write that, I couldn't write what was needed.

So the family officer returned to Laura's house

and they filled in the disability living allowance form together.

They also applied for carer's allowance,

income support, child tax credit, housing benefit and child benefit.

I couldn't have done it without her. I couldn't have.

But with the National Deaf Children's Society, she did,

and Laura received all the benefits she was entitled to -

just over £380 a week.

It's incredible. I can actually pay my bills.

I am not homeless and I can feed my child.

With her financial worries taken care of,

Laura could now turn to the National Deaf Children's Society

for the emotional support she needed,

and a glimpse of a brighter future for Poppy.

A lot of families feel isolated, and one thing we do

is bring them together for family weekends.

The family weekends are run throughout the country

in different regions.

One of the concerns that Laura had initially

was how she was going to communicate with Poppy,

so we invited Laura to go on a family sign course.

It was really important because we had to talk to our daughter.

'I needed to communicate with her, I needed to be able to say,'

"It's time to eat. "Do you want to go to sleep?"

'I needed to make sure she wasn't frustrated,'

that she could communicate with us. She is actually very bright.

The family weekend was another turning point in Laura's life.

There were about 15 families,

and they taught us about 300 phrases,

they taught us how to read to her

and we told her her first bedtime story and it was just great.

And there was more good news. Around the same time,

Laura's health visitor suggested she contacted the Family Fund.

The Family Fund is a charity, a UK-wide charity,

working with families of disabled children.

It's a grant-giving organisation.

We help families with anything that is related to the care of the child.

There were two things Laura needed extra help with -

the cost of getting to the Southampton Institute of Sound and Vibration Research

where Poppy was being fitted with hearing implants, and a new buggy.

At the time, we had a brilliant off-roader, three-wheeler...

wonderful buggy that someone had given me

and she couldn't see us.

She was in a world of silence by herself.

She couldn't get our attention

and she hated it. I was pushing it,

holding her the whole time.

Having a rear-facing one so that she could see us talking

meant that not only could we sign to her

'but she could sign to us when she wanted to talk to us.'

So Laura asked the charity for help.

We first received an application from Laura in February 2011,

and from that application form - we read through them,

I look at their particular applications - I decided

that this one needed a visit from one of our local advisors.

I was really excited. The lady came to our house, she was brilliant.

I kept saying, "Um... I think I can buy a cheaper pram,"

and she was like, "Don't worry, you've paid your taxes,

"this is what you're entitled to."

The Family Fund doesn't have a bottomless pot of money,

but families who are on a low income and receiving tax credits

and other benefits may be eligible for a grant.

And Laura was.

The family received a grant for transport costs

to enable them to get to and from the hospital,

and also a forward-facing buggy

so that Mum could interact with Poppy when she was out and about

and improve her communication skills.

I'm really grateful for Family Fund's help.

I can interact with my daughter,

I can chat to her while we're going down the road. It's priceless.

In less than a year, and with the help of her saints,

Laura's life had turned around.

She had the financial support she so desperately needed

and the ongoing emotional support which would get her through

the challenges of bringing up a deaf child.

The support is always there for Laura, whenever she wants it.

Families need different information and support at different times

during their child's life and NDCS will always be there to help them.

Them knowing that they'll get good, confident support

is a godsend to most families.

Laura's currently discussing Poppy's nursery school

and education needs with the National Deaf Children's Society,

and having met inspiring people through the NDCS,

she's feeling very positive about Poppy's future.

'My hopes now for Poppy...'

I hope she'll be a well-educated, well-rounded young lady

'who has a very good job that she's happy in.

'I met a few people in NDCS'

who were profoundly deaf, had two degrees,

had gone round the world, had a family and were happy.

It's good to know that there are saints in this country

to help pull you out of your depths of despair.

And now that the right support is in place,

Poppy's future is looking very bright indeed.

Hopefully there is no stopping her.

Now it's time to return to our scrounger.

Newham Council has teamed up with the Department for Work and Pensions

to investigate Shahzad Ali, a 36-year-old family man.

He's suspected of fraudulently claiming nearly £174,000 worth

of income support, housing benefit and council tax benefit.

And if Newham Council can prove it,

they're going to make sure he pays it all back.

It came about because Mr Ali had bank accounts he hadn't declared

to the Department for Work and Pensions

but Inland Revenue were aware of them - they had interest payments going into them.

As part of the investigation, the next course of action

was then to approach the banks and ask them for statements

for all the accounts that Mr Ali had failed to previously declare to us.

And when they received the bank statements,

they realised they had a big-time fraudster on their hands.

Once we'd received the statements from all the relevant banks

and building societies, we were able to identify that Mr Ali

actually had quite a lot of money across these bank accounts.

What it also showed was that over the course of the claim,

he was putting in thousands of pounds

and also taking out thousands of pounds.

There was at least £100,000

in Mr Ali's various undeclared accounts.

So, in January 2009,

the investigators got him in for questioning to try and establish

where the money was coming from and how much he actually had.

Mr Ali claimed in his interview under caution

that the monies going into his bank account

were coming from a syndicate which he was part of.

Apparently, the way this syndicate worked

was that a group of friends put money into a pot

and every so often, one of them won the whole lot.

Do you believe that?

No. Neither did Newham Council.

Mr Ali provided no evidence to support this incredible claim.

He never provided any names and details,

any addresses of any of the people involved in this syndicate.

So the council questioned him further

about where the money was coming from,

and the answer he gave them was completely unexpected.

They were savings from my benefits.

-Well, £7,000 over four months is very nearly £2,000 a month...

-Yeah.

-..out of your benefits.

-Yeah, but we get £3,000 a month.

So you're spending £1,000 to feed and clothe you and six children?

-Yeah, but...

-As well as paying all your bills?

Yeah. We use how much we use.

Oh, yes. You did hear it correctly.

He was receiving £3,000 a month in benefits

and putting away £2,000 each month.

That's £24,000 a year plus interest.

There's nothing to stop you saving up the benefits that you receive,

but you're still obliged to tell us about those savings.

Which, as we know, he didn't.

At this point in the interview,

Newham Council were beginning to wonder if Mr Ali could have had

other accounts they weren't aware of,

and when questioned about this, he revealed he had

another three accounts with Nationwide.

So including the accounts they've already discovered,

I make that 13 bank accounts. Crikey. And this is a man who says he can't afford to pay his rent?

Pull the other one. It's got bells on it.

As there were more accounts,

there was potentially more money being stashed away.

The original sum was estimated at £100,000,

but in his interview under caution,

Mr Ali admitted that it was more than that.

All I'm saying to you is that the amount

which you are saying, £100,000, is...

not up-to-date.

It goes up to, maybe,

over 100 and...uh...

..60,000, 70,000.

Pardon? 170 grand?!

Newham Council decided it was time to put the questioning on hold

and do a bit more digging.

After Mr Ali informed us about his further three Nationwide accounts,

we then had to approach Nationwide for them to provide us

with statements for those accounts covering the whole claim period.

We needed to see exactly how much money

Mr Ali had in those accounts for that time.

And it was a substantial amount.

In September 2005, he had a cash credit of £10,000.

In October 2005, he had a further transfer of £10,000.

Again, some time later, in January 2008,

he had a cheque credit for £12,000. And then in February 2009

there was a counter-cheque withdrawal from the account for £40,000.

Armed with this information, in May 2009,

Newham Council got Mr Ali in for a second interview under caution.

And it was during this interview

that the staggering truth was revealed.

First up, the total amount he had in savings.

I've got 182.

In my accounts, 182.

-182,000?

-Yes. 182,000.

Unbelievable, isn't it?

Mr Ali had £182,000 in savings but he was still claiming benefits.

Now, it's very simple. If you have more than £16,000 in savings,

you're not entitled to benefits and if you carry on claiming,

you're committing a crime.

So Newham Council and the DWP had to find out

if this was naive misunderstanding or a calculated fraud.

We've already established that you had sufficient savings

that you should have told us about.

ALI SIGHS

You were worried about your benefit getting stopped, yeah?

-Is that correct?

-Um...

I was worried that my housing benefit

and the council tax might be...um...

-..stopped.

-OK.

And is that the reason why you failed to declare your savings

all the way through to the end of your claim?

-Can you please say yes or no?

-Yes, yes.

The investigators finally had the confirmation they needed.

Mr Ali had been claiming benefits he knew he wasn't entitled to.

But there was more to come. During the course of the investigation,

Mr Ali claimed that the money going in and out of his accounts

was syndicate money, benefits savings,

loans made to family members and repayments of those loans.

One transaction, however, stood out from the rest.

I've been looking at your other bank accounts

and you've withdrawn quite large sums of money out of them.

In fact, £168,500 in total

you withdrew on the same day,

the 16th of February 2009.

Can you tell me where that money's gone to?

I bought a property with that.

-RECORD SCRATCHES

-Pardon? Did I hear that correctly?

Yeah, I bought a property with that.

So Mr Ali had used most of his savings, which, as we know,

included thousands of pounds of fraudulently claimed benefits,

to buy a house. That is just wrong.

Benefits are for people who genuinely need them,

not to help scroungers get on the property ladder.

This was a case of pure greed, and, compared to other cases of undeclared savings,

one of the most serious we've ever investigated.

Mr Ali begged for forgiveness, but guess what?

He wasn't entitled to it and he wasn't going to get it either.

Mr Ali was summonsed to Stratford Magistrates' Court in April, 2011.

He was charged on four counts -

two of dishonest false representations

in relation to his claim for income support

and two of dishonestly obtaining exemptions

from paying rent to London Borough of Newham

and paying council tax to London Borough of Newham.

Shahzad Ali pleaded guilty to all charges

and was sentenced at Inner London Crown Court

to 20 months in prison.

Mr Ali defrauded the London Borough of Newham and DWP

out of nearly £174,000. It's a very serious offence

and we are pleased that his sentence reflects that.

And what about the money, I hear you cry?

Don't worry, Newham Council

and the Department for Work and Pensions are on the case.

Mr Ali will have to repay all the money that he stole from us.

There is a financial investigation under way

in order to identify all assets that he has.

These assets may be used to repay the debt.

In Newham, we take fraud seriously.

Benefits are there for a purpose, to help the neediest in society,

and if you abuse the system we will investigate you

and wherever possible, prosecute you.

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