The Daily Record reports that Elizabeth Gibson, an HMRC employee, defrauded HMRC out of £58K over a period of 7 years.
Apparently she made false claims for dead relatives and people who didn't exist.
It is not clear to me as to why the system did not flag that the people had died several years before the fraud started, I assume that at the time of their deaths HMRC (Inland Revenue as it then was) would have been informed?
I would be interested to know how she was able to do this, and what caused the fraud to be discovered.
Tax does have to be taxing.
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"It is not clear to me as to why the system did not flag that the people had died several years before the fraud started"
ReplyDeleteWhy would a small thing like Death deter HMRC?
There are only two certainties in life - death and taxes.
ReplyDeleteAfter my late wife died, I received PAYE coding forms the following year. I believe this was due to her last employer not completing the necessary field on her P14, so perhaps HMRC were not entirely at fault. However, as her executor, I was expected to complete the necessary forms to let them know whether they could skin me for IHT. Quite clearly, their systems are not integrated. If they were it would be so easy to highlight exceptions of this kind for somebody to investigate.
ReplyDeleteI have heard a similar story about a DSS employee stealing money by transferring money into clients' bank accounts. She had contrived a method of accessing these accounts for her own benefit.
It all goes to show that government IT systems are crap. They are open to the most basic of fraud methods. I guess the government could not give a sh*t, so long as we long suffering taxpayers pay for the huge amounts defrauded each year, by both inside jobs and the client state.