A network of Bulgarian fraudsters were “living like barons” after stealing at least tens of millions in Universal Credit welfare money in what is being described as the United Kingdom’s largest-ever benefit fraud scheme.
Last month, five Bulgarian nationals, Galina Nikolova, 39, Stoyan Stoyanov, 28, Tsvetka Todorova, 53, Gyunesh Ali, 34, and Patritsia Paneva, 27, pled guilty to a series of benefit fraud and money laundering-related offences after admitting to stealing over £50 million in UK Universal Credit, a scheme intended to help disadvantaged Britons with their living costs.
The welfare fraud scheme saw the network assist thousands of Bulgarians — some of whom have never even set foot in Britain — to collect Universal Credit checks of up to £2,500 per month from the UK government through the submission of an array of forged documents, such as fake rental tenancy agreements, payslips, and forged letters from employers, doctors, landlords, and schools, the Shropshire Star reports.
The fraud network, which operated from October 2016 to May 2021, was first uncovered by Bulgarian police inspector Vassil Panayotov, who became suspicious after his small city of Silven was suddenly flush with cash, with residents parading around in designer clothes and suddenly embarking upon relatively lavish real estate projects.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Panayotov said: “I wondered how these people had got such money… I received information from contacts that hundreds of people were receiving social benefits from the United Kingdom using the weaknesses in the British social system.
“When I received that information I started to check myself and began my own investigation. I eventually concluded that we were talking about maybe £200 million every year from the UK.
“The money coming into Sliven transformed the area. It did so in terms of property, but also people were buying designer clothes, and opening shops, casinos… The fraudsters are earning easy money and they spend their money easily, without any plans. They are living like barons.”
After being tipped off by Panayotov, British investigators discovered three “benefit factories” located in London, which produced “claim packs” equipped with forged and fake documents to help people in Bulgaria obtain a national insurance number through which they could claim benefits from the UK.
Mr Panaytov explained that so-called “customers” in Bulgaria would pay the network a commission between £500 and £800 in exchange for facilitating them to get access to Universal Credit, following which they would receive checks between £2,000 and £2,500 a month from the British taxpayer. He said that Bulgarian investigators identified at least a few thousand people taking advantage of the scheme, but said many more were likely still fraudulently receiving UK money through other schemes in the country.
He said: “Our investigation found that a few thousand people were customers of this scheme and it is likely that many are still receiving money through similar schemes.
In addition, the gang also organised hundreds of cheap flights for their “customers” to travel to Britain so that they could take pictures and attend meetings to “prove” that they were living in the UK to the Department for Work and Pensions, which the gang frequently mocked as being naive to their fraud.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) also revealed this week that during a raid on one of the properties owned by the Bulgarian fraudsters, police found shopping bags and suitcases stuffed full of cash as well as designer goods such as watches, jackets and glasses.
The prosecutor in the case, Tom Little KC, told the Wood Green Crown Court this week that most of those involved in the scheme “lived in Bulgaria and made claims in which they falsely claimed that they lived and worked here when they did not”.“Many travelled here for a short period of time to support the claim before returning to Bulgaria with the claim remaining ongoing. Some never even travelled here,” he added.
Panayotov said that he was astonished at how long the scheme was allowed to evade detection from UK authorities, saying: “At the beginning, the British officers in the embassy said that was not possible… Even our director was surprised at the scale of it.”
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