Episode 11 Saints and Scroungers

It's an age-old principle in this country

that when we have people in genuine need, we help them out.

It's vital support that improves lives.

At one point, I just thought, "This is it. I can't do this no more."

However, whenever there's cash on offer,

you'll also find people who want to steal it.

Those trying to pinch from the public purse are being pursued.

Clearly, she was able to make significant profit.

Welcome to the world of Saints And Scroungers.

Saints And Scroungers shows the very best and the very worst

of the benefits system,

including those that set out deliberately to steal from public coffers.

It shows those who need help and those who help themselves.

Every day across the UK, investigators fight to bring fraudsters to justice

and saints fight to make sure people in need

get what they're entitled to.

Coming up on today's show -

a claimant at the heart of a complex web of lies.

She was very evasive and had a cock-and-bull story

about this all being done by other people.

And the cunning canine who came to the rescue.

It just means I'm a little bit less disabled than I was before.

Money makes the world go round, that's what the song says.

If you haven't got any money, it certainly comes to a juddering halt.

The government is there to help you if you get into a cash crisis.

Then there are some people

who seem perfectly happy to help themselves.

This is Fabiola Dantas.

On the face of it, an ordinary working single mother employed as a cleaner

who turned to Brent Council for help paying her rent

in the form of housing benefits.

She stated that she had children

and wasn't working more than 16 hours a week,

which also entitled Dantas to claim for useful tax credits

on top of housing benefits.

Investigators didn't know it at the time,

but she was about to be at the centre

of one of their biggest cases.

In August 2007, Dantas wasn't even on the radar

when a benefit assessor flagged up

some discrepancies with benefit claims in Brent.

Some of the forms looked suspicious and possibly fake.

The suspicious claims were passed on to fraud investigator Simon Lane.

The first claim we had in respect to this case

was from a guy called Jose Nunes

who was living in Chamberlain Road in the borough

as a single man, allegedly with his daughter.

The checks that were initially made on that claim were with HMRC

to see if the tax credits letters were genuine

and also with the whole of Brent schools

to see where the daughter was being educated.

Eventually, the checks came back from HMRC

saying that the tax credit letters weren't genuine or had been altered

and we couldn't find any trace of the daughter.

Wait a minute. The school had no idea who this guy's daughter was.

That's a bit weird.

A short while later, a different benefits assessor

handed on an unrelated claim to the investigators.

This time it was bank statements that didn't add up.

We then received a claim from Evandro Pereira

at another address, Bazalgette House.

Similar MO, claimant with a child.

The assessment officer that received that claim was suspicious

because the bank statement was showing the date of February,

but spelt with a V, Fev, shortened version of February,

which would be obviously not the correct English spelling.

And sent it to us to have a look at.

So another single dad claiming for a nonexistent child.

And what about these spelling mistakes?

The team decided to look further into this Evandro Pereira.

The case was assigned to one of their top fraud investigators.

Due to the nature of his job, he's asked to remain anonymous.

One of the things that we noticed on the claim was that there was dates,

it was marked Fev, F-E-V, on a Barclays Bank statement.

We contacted Barclays Bank in order to verify whether or not

that is something they would put on one of their statements

to see whether it was an authentic statement

or if it was a fraudulent counterfeit document.

Barclays did verify that they would not put Fev on their bank statements.

OK. So that's two single dads bringing up children in the borough,

both with questionable paperwork.

A short time later, there was yet another case

with striking similarities.

Again, we received a claim in the name of Danielle Alexandre

at an address close to the other two addresses.

Again, it carried the Fev date on the bank statement.

We made some enquiries with the landlord of that property,

who said Alexandre wasn't, as far as they were concerned, a tenant.

Not a tenant.

Similar spelling mistakes.

What could these links between unassociated applicants mean?

There were questions to be asked,

but meanwhile, claims were still flowing into the office.

Around about the same time, we received a further claim

from a guy called Cesar Teixeira.

He's at the same address as Alexandre.

Same MO, low earnings, children involved,

can't trace the children to schools.

Fraudulent claims, addresses appearing again and again,

but with different occupants.

Benefit claims for children that couldn't be tracked down.

Something was up and the team knew it.

But for the time being, these were all being treated

as separate, unrelated cases by different investigators.

These cases shared addresses and spelling mistakes

and, what do you know,

bank statements included in Alexandre's paperwork

contained data relating to Pereira,

linking the two separate claimants.

It could well have been that the same statements

were used on the other claims

where they'd just changed the name and the address on the statements,

the account information and details held within there.

Obviously, you can't see who they relate to,

but they would have been the same ones.

Further investigations started to raise more suspicions.

Requests for extra information

resulted in inconsistent employer and landlord details.

We'd ask for other information,

things like wage slips or contracts of employment.

At which point, Alexandre decided to withdraw her claim to benefit.

With all the inconsistencies, it was time to pay someone a visit.

With the Pereira claim,

we actually went around to the property.

Knocked on the door looking for him and was told he wasn't about.

We tried to invite him in for an interview

and we got a call to say that he was unavailable.

We tried to rearrange it and then shortly after,

we got a letter in to say he's going back to Brazil

and obviously can't make any more appointments.

Like a red rag to a bull to an investigator.

Often, the very act of withdrawing or cancelling a claim

is a sign of potential guilt.

Basically, what we thought then

was they were willing to burn a claim, as we call it,

to stop the claim, throw it away and start with a new claim

to avoid getting caught.

We got together the officers involved and we realised

there were similarities within the different investigations

that we were looking at.

They were using addresses, contact numbers and other information.

A landlord's telephone number on one claim

would be an employer's telephone number on another claim.

A previous address on one claim would be where they were working on a different claim.

It was at that stage we started looking at the identities on the claims.

We noted that the Nunes and the Teixeira claims

had the same photograph on different passports.

While the investigators weren't exactly sure who was responsible,

it looked like the team had unearthed a large-scale,

highly-organised benefit fraud

relying on multiple addresses,

multiple identities and fake paperwork,

paperwork that was allowing them to make claims.

Then yet another suspicious application was passed on to them.

This time from a Miss Fabiola Dantas.

Remember her?

She's our hard-working mother

claiming for housing benefit and tax credits.

Dantas was also claiming for children

who weren't known to the local schools either.

Sound familiar? Well, just look a little closer.

She was claiming for three children. When we looked historically,

those children had changed over the years.

There was a total of 12 different children registered to her claim,

never all in one go.

12 children. Wow!

I mean, I can't imagine anyone with all those children

would ever have time to con the council.

Unless she was some kind of supermum.

Only ever two to four children registered at any one time.

As the children got older, into a school year

where a benefit assessor had contacted them

to ask for some verifications of that child,

something would happen.

They'd move abroad, they'd move to family members.

Dantas even went as far as to declare that one child had died.

We were given a death certificate to that.

And obviously, later,

further children would be added to the claim again.

But there wasn't 12 children

on there at one time to raise that suspicion.

It's only when you look into the archives of the previous details

that went obviously back a number of years

that this all came to light.

This long-term deception was damning enough,

but once Dantas was in the frame, her name began to appear everywhere.

linked to the properties and individuals already under investigation,

which had now been grouped under the codename Operation Scarlet.

When they started to knock on doors, the plot thickened.

Fabiola Dantas was also a claimant of ours.

So she was not only a claimant, but she was being identified

as a possible landlord by some of the tenants.

How could a mother claiming for benefits be a landlord, as well?

It didn't added up.

We obtained all of the claim forms

and the relevant documents that had been submitted.

We started to suspect some people were using multiple identities,

particularly the Nunes claim,

where we felt that the picture on the passport

was similar to the Teixeira claim.

The paper trail suggested Dantas was not only claiming tax credits illegally,

but might also be using fake passports and identities

under the names of Teixeira, Nunes and Pereira

to make further bogus benefit claims.

Fabiola Dantas turned up as a guarantor for Nunes

and she also turned up as a council taxpayer at Blackheath House,

neither of which she was ostensibly associated with.

The web was getting more complex.

On top of everything else, investigators were beginning

to suspect that Dantas was renting houses in false names,

claiming benefits at those properties,

as well as taking rent from tenants.

There were a number of properties, about ten or eleven properties.

Lots of the properties were used as either employer addresses

or landlord addresses for other claims.

And then those properties themselves would be other employer addresses

and the whole thing was linked.

You'd get a circular link, if you like, with various phone numbers

associated with properties linked to other properties,

all within this group of ten or eleven properties.

The investigators were realising

Dantas was at the centre of what's known as carousel fraud.

She was creating multiple fake identities

and recycling their details across different claims

in a circular effect.

Dantas was defrauding the council of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The pressure was on to find her

and bring a stop to a misleading merry-go-round of criminality.

Operation Scarlet was given the green light.

Would they be able to bring Dantas to justice?

I remember the morning of the searches.

I was feeling very nervous,

hoping that all the evidence I got was obviously accurate.

I'm thinking, "I don't want this to go wrong."

OK. Farewell to the fraudsters and hello to people we call saints.

That's those in society who help others who are in genuine need,

but are sometimes too proud

or don't know how to claim what's rightfully theirs.

Imagine a world where all your everyday needs

require somebody else to help you -

simple things like emptying the washing machine,

opening a door or picking up a pencil.

All the things that, in fact,

able-bodied people take for granted without a second thought.

And that's exactly what life's like for 33-year-old Lorna Marsh.

I have cerebral palsy quadriplegia.

The cerebral palsy means that I'm a wheelchair user

and the quadriplegia bit means that it affects all four limbs.

And it basically means the messages

don't get from my head to where I want them to go.

Lorna keeps herself very busy.

She's not only working with autistic children

and adults as a part-time teacher,

on top of that, she's got a successful career

working for an organisation called Surrey Independent Living Council.

It's a job that draws on all her experience

and insight as a disabled person.

I've come to meet her to find out a bit more.

The role that you have helping people, how does that work?

What do you help them to do?

Basically, I support people with their direct payments.

Direct payments is a funding that's awarded by government

to help other people in various situations live more independently.

What is it that qualifies you, do you think,

to be able to help people in this way?

I've been on direct payments myself for about 18 years or so.

I also saw the fight that my parents had to find out the information.

And I thought, "I don't want other people to go through that."

I just saw it as a good opportunity to share my experiences with them.

Confidence has never been an issue for Lorna.

From as far as I can remember,

I've always been absolutely determined if there's something I want to do,

then there's no reason why I shouldn't do it.

And that's what drives me to achieve as much as I want to achieve.

And I think that if I wasn't disabled,

then I wouldn't have the drive I've got.

Because I want to prove people wrong all the time.

She's no shrinking violet.

And true to her belief in proving people wrong,

she went to university to study dance.

People might look at you in your wheelchair and say

you are the least qualified person they can think of

to be engaging in the act of dance.

How does it work?

It works by me having the creative ideas in my head

and having the opportunity to get other people

who are able bodied or more able than myself

to produce them in front of me.

Lorna had a great time at university,

but it was there that she began to realise

just how hard life was going to be for her

as an independent woman out in the big wide world.

I couldn't go, "Mum? Dad? I need a hand."

Because they were saying, "We're not helping now. You've moved out."

It was a good thing, they did me a favour.

But obviously, they're there if I need them,

but they said, "You've got to try and do this on your own."

Living life with cerebral palsy

not only means that Lorna Marsh requires a wheelchair,

but she needs substantial help on a daily basis.

The question was, how could Lorna be more independent,

given her care needs?

The solution came when least expected.

And when it did, Lorna was quick to take up the lead.

I was actually at a wheelchair exhibition.

They had a dog there and I fell in love with the dog

and I fell in love with the whole concept.

The big idea was that of Canine Partners,

which, as the name suggests, partners a client with a disability

with a trained dog that can do many useful everyday tasks.

Yes, it's time to meet Eli, Lorna's best friend and helper.

He's a live-in personal assistant who's only too happy to help.

Talk me through the things he can help you out with on a daily basis.

But he does 306 or so different things for me.

They range from opening and closing the door...

Good lad! Good lad!

..opening and closing the bin

to helping me take my coat off...

Good boy!

..to flushing the toilet...

Yay!

..to turning the lights on and off.

You know, the list is nonstop.

PHONE RINGS

Good boy!

Good boy!

The range of tasks that Eli is able to perform is amazing.

It takes hours of dedicated and specialised training

before the dogs get to go home with their new owners.

It takes about two years for the dogs to complete their training.

So they are with puppy parents

up until the first 14-18 months of their lives,

where they have weekly puppy classes.

And they come into us, where we have them

for 15 weeks in advance training.

So usually, by the time the dog's going out,

they're usually about two years old.

Once the all-important bond between Lorna and Eli was established,

the impact on her life was instant and dramatic.

And I remember, I got him to open the door

and then I also got him to close the door behind me.

This was the first time I'd opened and closed the door independently

in my entire life ever.

It sounds to me like you've got two things here.

-You've got really practical help.

-Yeah.

But you've also got something which just is another asset to your life,

another facet to your life

which makes it a life, not an existence.

He's one of the best decisions I ever made.

I'm going to cry, so I'm going to stop.

Yeah, no, he's phenomenal.

Because it's just great.

It just means I'm a little bit less disabled than I was before.

Between 2007 and 2009,

a series of fraudulent applications for child tax credits

and assorted fake documents

sent alarm bells ringing for Brent Council fraud investigators.

Fabiola Dantas' name kept on cropping up,

linking her to an organised scam to defraud the council

of hundred of thousands of pounds.

There was, sort of, what we'd call a carousel effect,

where they were pushing the details around on to the next claim.

And we'd linked the fact they were all using European identities,

they were all claiming to work 16 hours,

which is the minimum amount of hours

you can work to get tax credits at that time,

which meant they could get their top-up housing benefit

at the maximum rate.

The fact that they had children, they could get three, four bedroom houses

to house those children.

We realised the claims were linked because of the contact details

and because of the use of various documentation

within each of the claims, different names appearing,

the children's names being very similar

and literally the same thing occurring

on all of these benefit claims.

The investigators believed Dantas was at the centre

of all this carousel fraud.

Now they just had to prove it.

We'd contacted the banks and building societies involved

and they'd provided us with CCTV footage from ATMs.

We wasn't sure, but we did see that there was a gentleman and a lady

that were more often drawing money from the various bank accounts.

That's when we believed it was people creating fraudulent identities

to obtain benefit claims and abuse the system.

The investigators were now hot on Dantas' trail

and were trying to prove she was pocketing the money.

In the meantime, investigators were able

to join up all the confusing elements

to get their first clear view of how the scam worked.

We believe the properties were private landlord-owned properties

rented out directly or via estate agencies

to Dantas or her associates.

We're aware that the rent was paid.

Often the benefit was there to pay the rent.

That wasn't where she was getting necessarily the profit of her scam.

The profit came from the fact that there wasn't children

and she had many spare rooms that were then rented out.

And if you're not actually paying the rent, housing benefit is,

any profit you get goes straight to yourself.

So that's what it's all about.

Now that Dantas' fraud was out in the open,

the investigators had to move quickly to shut her down.

We've got no power of arrest as a local authority

and no powers to search, so we need the assistance of the police.

So in around 2011, we approached our colleagues at Wembley Police

to see if they'd assist with an arrest and search.

The whole investigation had been conducted by Brent Council

and they'd spent quite a few months gathering the evidence

with regards to the frauds.

So in effect, it was their own investigation.

They needed police assistance with regards to executing warrants,

taking people into custody.

The police arranged for search warrants

on five different properties to be conducted simultaneously.

Now that the police were on board,

the team got ready for a raid on the suspect properties.

After so much time tracking down the criminals,

they were understandably tense.

In the morning at the briefing, we could see 30 police officers,

15 UK Border Agency officers for any Brazilian overstayers

and also eight of my colleagues that were involved in the searches.

I'm thinking, "I don't want this to go wrong."

"I hope my evidence is secure."

I remember them moving from the briefing to sites of the searches

and how professional and organised the police were

in getting their search teams into place

on a number of these properties.

As the police went in, it wasn't long

before they realised they'd struck gold.

Of the arrests that were made, some were for immigration offences

that were dealt with by the UK Border Agency.

Then, with regards to criminal arrests,

we arrested one of the main subjects, which was Fabiola Dantas.

Bingo! The team were in luck

and the police had nabbed their chief suspect.

When the police and investigators entered the properties,

they found Fabiola Dantas quite quickly.

She was at one of the properties that there was a claim to benefit at.

Just not the claim address

that she was claiming to live at for benefit purposes.

She was using one of the other addresses.

The address she was claiming at was only two doors away.

Also, in her property, there were no children,

but there were other people that were paying her rent.

Not only had the police had caught Dantas red-handed,

they also bagged evidence of her activities,

including more damning paperwork

that proved she was the key player all along.

She had a small Mercedes vehicle out the front.

Both the vehicle and her house were searched.

We found a number of items which were used in evidence,

including bank cards with PIN numbers written on the back

in the names of some of the other tenants.

Blank tenancy agreements and blank wage slips.

She did have the latest gadgets, iPhones, computers, et cetera,

but not huge, significant amounts or luxury items within the house.

We found many pictures.

We could clearly see that she'd been to Amsterdam, Paris,

Egypt, to a football game,

Benfica, which is in Portugal.

The money obviously was going into this luxury lifestyle

of travelling around Europe.

Her mobile phone was looked at, as well,

and we found, having translated it at a later stage,

she said that she was sending a lot of money back home to Brazil

to family that she had there.

With Dantas finally under arrest,

the fraud team felt like they were getting close

to putting a stop to this scam.

And from their chief suspect, they wanted answers.

But even under questioning, it seemed that Dantas

wasn't prepared to go quietly.

One of my officers interviewed her under caution.

At that interview, she was quite evasive.

She couldn't provide any proper explanation

as to what the basis of the claims were,

where these children were.

She initially said that she was an informant of ours

and she'd given us anonymous information about these claims.

She was very evasive, not particularly helpful

and had a cock-and-bull story about this all being done by other people.

It seemed that after a lifetime of deceit,

Dantas couldn't help but lay the lies on even thicker.

She was prepared to tell anything, apart from the truth.

While on remand, she requested a second interview with us.

And we ended up interviewing her in one of the cells at court

and she offered an explanation

that her children were being held hostage in Brazil

and she was being forced to perpetuate this fraud.

She'd never started it, she was just perpetuating a fraud

that had been set up by someone else and she was doing so under duress.

With the amount of evidence they had,

clearly, these last-ditch attempts to cover up her guilt

weren't going to fool anybody.

In the end, Dantas pleaded guilty to all charges

and was finally sent down for 27 months in prison.

But the big question has to be,

how much did her 12-year criminal campaign cost the public purse

before a stint in jail finally put a stop to it?

A whopping estimated £192,000.

We're always pleased to see a custodial sentence in these cases

where there's a significant amount of money

taken from the public purse, nearly £200,000.

We're still pursuing a confiscation hearing.

There will be one under the Proceeds of Crime Act,

where we'll be trying to identify any assets

that are held by Miss Dantas

and trying to identify any criminal benefit that she's gained

as a result of the monies that she's stolen from us.

And we'll be attempting to recover funds where possible.

Eventually, like all bad things, it came to an end.

And Dantas' carousel fraud finally stopped turning.

As did her world, when the judge sent her to jail.

You can't claim benefits from there.

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