Friday, 9 October 2020

Freddy Fraudster Finds Friends

For some people, enough is not enough .....

Cash Is King When Hiding Money
Cash Is King When Hiding Money ......

Richard Albert Cocks (Dickie Cocks?), a retired former Taxi driver, who lived in St Clements on the Island of Jersey is one such.

In 2012 he lived in a government-funded flat, and had been claiming state welfare benefits for four years, after declaring he had no money in any bank accounts. In all he claimed £51,000 in welfare benefits over a number of years.

However police found that he had £10,000 in a National Westminster Bank account, and a further £52,000 in income bonds, and then they discovered over £1m spread over a number of Santander bank accounts. In all he had at least £1.2m ($1.5m). It emerged later in court, that he had even arranged to get his pension credit payments paid in cash, to hide the existence of his bank accounts.

Cocks was very unapologetic when confronted with the evidence of his fraud, and actually felt betrayed by the banks for disclosing the information to the police. He was jailed for benefit fraud in July 2017, and was ordered to pay back £51,000 to the social security department, and also the Crown's legal costs.

Interesting to note that he had seemingly not paid his National Insurance stamps while working, or he would very likely have not needed to make a claim for an income related pension credit (which is how he got caught), and thus declare his income/savings, as he would have had the full State Pension, which is not an income-related benefit.

Hard Working Immigrant?

Rassl Kadir is resourceful if not exactly honest. He arrived in the UK claiming to be a 16 year old fleeing the Taliban, but 15 years later, he was caught robbing the tax payer of at least £29k, after claiming he was incapable of work due to a bad back.

In the mean time he continued to work in the Blackpool, UK area, at not just one, but at four jobs. He hardly had time to get to bed, what with his work for a grocery firm, a cake makers, a job agency (ironically), and a packer. He admitted only to the 4 years worth of fraud they could prove, but as usual, he was given 11 years to repay the money (which he is unlikely to do), and a suspended prison term.

Profiting From Disaster

One of the side effects of the Grenfell tower fire is that as well as exposing the fact that there is a massive problem of council housing residents actually sub-letting illegally, it also brought out a large number of fraudsters.

Kofi Koouakou told authorities that he had been living with victim Zainab Deen when the fire broke out. He then claimed hotel accommodation to the sum of £30,000 before being caught as a fraudster. He got fours years imprisonment, and is the 11th person convicted so far for fraudulently claiming money or housing based on the fire .... this seems harsh when Rassl Kadir got a suspended sentence for a similar amount of fraud.

Cold Calling Frauds

One in five Brits say that they have been urged to make false holiday sickness claims by cold calling ambulance chasers, according to Abta the travel trade organisation. Sickness claims while on holidays abroad have risen six fold since 2013.

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