Eastern European Gangs ‘Stealing Passports to Claim UK Benefits’
Eastern European gangs operating on an “industrial scale” in Britain are fraudulently claiming tens of thousands of pounds in benefits by stealing immigrants’ passports and by forging birth certificates, an undercover investigation has found.
Criminals operating across the country are trafficking homeless people to the UK then taking their passports so they can be used to receive state handouts.
Others are printing bogus birth certificates so they can claim valuable benefits for non-existent children.
More 4 News reporters discovered gangsters boasting of raking in £6,000 a week by exploiting Britain’s generous welfare system, which is already paying out an estimated £170 million a year to Eastern European migrants.
Since the European Union opened its doors to Poland and seven other former Communist states in 2004, Eastern Europeans who have lived and worked in Britain for more than a year have been legally allowed to claim Child Benefit even if their children remain in their home countries.
This is worth £18.80 a week for their eldest child and £12.55 for each younger one. All they need to provide is an EU passport and a birth certificate.
Official figures earlier this year disclosed that £72m is being paid out a year in Child Benefit alone to 88,000 eastern European families.
Migrants can also claim Working Tax Credit, a wage top-up that provides up to £6,645 a year to anyone who claims to be earning the minimum wage and looking after more than one child, as well as Jobseekers’ Allowance or Income Support.
But the television news investigation found criminals are adding to the bill for British taxpayers by pocketing benefits for non-existent children and victims of human trafficking.
A gangmaster called Janko from the Czech Republic, who now lives in a Bradford suburb, claimed to bring homeless people from Eastern Europe to Britain then apply for benefits in their name.
He is recorded saying: “Tax credit — you have to operate a tax credit. Also social security that they give to kids. Do you know how much I make in a week? £6,000.”
Marek Drabina, 28, from Frydek-Mistek in the Czech Republic, claims Janko paid him £50 a week to work in a chicken-processing factory in Manchester but stole his passport to claim benefits in his name.
He said: “Janko told me he was receiving some benefits, some money on my behalf, but I didn’t know how much and I didn’t see any of it, nothing. He said that it’s none of my business.
“He paid for my flight to England. When we arrived he told me that it cost him a thousand pounds and that I had to work for him until I paid for it. And he said that he wouldn’t return my ID and passport until I paid it back. It took me about six months to pay.”
The investigation uncovered five scams in Chatham, Peterborough, Bradford and Cardiff.
It also found gangs in Sheffield are making fake birth certificates and selling them for £100 each for other fraudsters to claim child benefit.
A Slovakian called Gejza, who met reporters posing as people traffickers at his home in Peterborough, was filmed brandishing a birth certificate and boasting: “This child doesn’t exist. I’ve made 20 children from nothing.”
HM Revenue and Customs is now looking into the findings of the programme, to be shown on More 4 News at 8pm on Monday.
