In 2021 alone, social fraudsters deprived the Austrian state – and the good taxpayers – of 20 million euros. This emerged from the latest report by the “Social Fraud Task Force”, which was specially set up in 2018, which revealed, among other things, that only in the previous year 4730 people were suspected of having received unjustified benefits – 70 percent of them do not have Austrian citizenship (the eXXpress reported ).
How these social fraudsters proceeded is now revealed in an even more detailed report by the Ministry of the Interior, which is available to eXXpress – from bogus residence to undeclared employment, everything is included.
First example: A suspicious Romanian was found in the course of an inspection in a gambling establishment. The police officers determined that the man worked there, but was also registered as unemployed with the AMS and received unemployment benefits.
In another case, an Iraqi national was receiving basic services. At the same time, the man ran a car dealership (buying and selling used cars). However, he concealed this employment in order to continue to receive financial support from basic services. Damage of around 22,000 euros was caused.
A Turk, on the other hand, received family allowance and the child tax credit for several children for years, although he had already returned to Turkey in 2012. During an inspection, it was determined that the accused was living in a bogus residence and was thus able to collect the social benefits. The damage in this case amounted to around 60,000 euros.
A Serb who acts as our “title example” also did it particularly boldly: The recipient of emergency aid bought a warehouse at a property and converted it into a workers’ quarters. As a result, he rented out beds to foreign workers – and thus collected a monthly income of around 4,000 euros in cash. This income was concealed from the AMS, since otherwise the emergency aid would have been discontinued.
A mother of three applied to a district authority for the child’s father to bring in the maintenance. After he did not respond to reminders and did not pay maintenance, she was granted a monthly maintenance advance of 544 euros. During a police check at the place of residence, however, it was found that the child’s father did live with the family – he had just not registered so as not to lose the payments.
And that’s not all: the accused pretended to the tax office that he didn’t live in the same household with his children and his wife. Therefore he had to pay maintenance for the children and applied for the maintenance tax credit, which he was also awarded. In the course of official checks, it was established that he lives with the family and is therefore not entitled. As a result, the family received double benefits to which they were not entitled – a complaint was filed.
Another suspect had been living in Serbia for some time and pretended to live in Vienna. As a result, he could continue to illegally receive the compensatory supplement to the Serbian pension. The Georgian citizen used a fake Polish passport and applied for social assistance under this EU identity. This fact was determined by a police check and reported.
The 68-year-old pensioner was in prison for a long time to serve a sentence. During this time the pension is suspended. In order to get his pension again before he was released from prison, he forged the release date on the release letter, which meant that his pension was paid earlier again. This falsification of the application was identified and reported by the Pensionsversicherungsanstalt (PVA).
