|
You Can't Catch Me
Over about a three week period we received four anonymous letters to say that Darren Hill was working and also signing on as unemployed. The letters never said where or when he worked but they did say he lived on a notorious estate: an estate that I knew well after countless investigations there in the past. Later letters went on to say that Hill was bragging that the DSS would never catch him because we wouldn’t work the hours or travel the distance that he did. And to cap it all we received another letter threatening to ‘jump on the band wagon’ since we clearly couldn’t stop benefit cheats. Since all the letters were written in the same hand, they clearly came from the same person, almost certainly someone with a grudge against him. Having it in for him was one thing but to advise that they too might make a false claim was not good news - assuming that they were not already doing so.
The estate where Hill lived had the highest level of benefit fraud in our area. It was difficult to mount observations there as it consisted of a series of cul de sacs off a ring road and the front doors led onto a central communal grass area with no vehicular access. One of the most difficult things was that on this estate it was near enough impossible to conduct observations in the road because residents would almost instantly pick up on you. I’d known colleagues who had suffered physical attacks there. It was almost a no-go area for surveillance. It was good sense to let the old bill know when you were going to be active there!
Checks with the police Local Intelligence Officer (LIO) revealed that Hill had a history of petty crime, taking and driving away (TDA) and theft. As far as the police knew, he didn’t own or have the use of a car. However he seemed to have dropped off their radar in the last six months. They had no recent information on him: no clue as to what work he was doing or where. Not much use!
We could not just stop paying his benefit on the basis of the letters; we needed evidence for an adjudication officer to determine that there was no entitlement under the benefit regulations. One option would be to challenge Hill at interview but he would more than likely laugh in our faces. Alternatively we could make the case that he was withholding specific information needed to determine his entitlement. This wasn’t a common tactic and more than likely it would not stand the test of time; he would appeal or re-claim after a matter of weeks. Not my preferred style as he would end up in receipt of benefit again very quickly and make us the laughing stock of the area.
I considered making a few un-notified visits to Hill’s house. He was claiming for a common law wife and young kids so she would more than likely be in when I called. But I knew from the informant’s reference to Hill’s bragging that he would run rings round us whether the visit was notified or not. If I notified him in advance I could be fairly sure he would be not be in when I arrived. Later he would undoubtedly say he was out looking for work, visiting friends or forgot. In any case I was fairly certain that he would brazen it out and if an adjudication officer decided to withhold benefit he would almost certainly appeal against that decision. The appeal tribunal would then find in his favour and we would be an even bigger laughing stock in the eyes of the claimants on that estate.
After thinking this through it was clear that observation was the only option. But I had to work out how to cope with the layout of the estate. Pathways from the front doors went across the grass and then connected to the ring road by wider paths cutting through the terraces of houses. Each house also had a rear exit through the back garden onto a cul de sac which led directly onto the ring road. This gave vehicles access to each property. Obviously I would not be able to watch the front and rear exits at the same time. We didn’t have another special investigator at our office and I didn’t think that anyone else on the fraud section would be willing to work the unsocial hours I’d need to put in, especially since we never got overtime!
Looking at the anonymous letters and in particular the comment that Hill was bragging that we would never catch him because we wouldn’t work the hours or travel the distance that he did suggested to me that this was going to need even earlier starts than I would normally make. Typically I’d start between five and six in the morning. I could quite easily tot up 12 to 14 hours a day on weekdays with some more hours put in on a Saturday and Sunday when needed. The advantage was that I accrued time off in lieu at an amazing rate.
With nothing but intuition to guide me, I decided to get to Hill’s house at 03:30 hours. It would be dark and I expected he would put on some lights when he got up. I chose to set up my observation point on the ring road where I could see the rear of the house. I knew the main bedroom was at the front but the bathroom and the kitchen were at the rear.
The house was in total darkness when I arrived. At this time of day there should be a lack of nosey neighbours looking out. Still, I was intending to spend at least an hour in wait so, just in case, I reclined my seat so that it was not obvious anybody was sitting in a stationary car. I could see the bathroom, kitchen and rear door of Hill’s house. At 03:52 a light went on upstairs. I wasn’t sure which room it was in or whether it was the landing. Four minutes later the kitchen light went on. Somebody was up and downstairs. I decided to take a walk and see if I could see who was in the kitchen. I switched the interior light to the off position and gently opened the car door. In my hyped-up state it was amazing how loud every sound I made seemed. I softly closed the door and made my way towards the cul de sac leading to the rear of Hill’s property.
I had hardly covered 20 yards when I heard a revving engine in the distance. Caught unawares, I wasn’t sure what to do or where to go. The engine noise was getting closer. Headlights approached just as I reached the turning to the cul de sac. As I stepped off the kerb to cross the road a white minibus veered left without indicating. Surely the driver had seen me? A quick glance showed that there were no passengers. Thinking fast, I sprinted back towards my car. When the minibus came back out I needed to be able to see who was in it and follow them. The minibus turned down the cul de sac and proceeded to do a three point turn at the end. I realised then that I couldn’t possibly get back to my car in time and so I decided to walk away from it, towards the town. I heard a door slam and the engine pick up before the minibus re-appeared and headed towards me again. Hands in my anorak pockets and head bowed, I carried on in the hope that I’d look like somebody just going off to work myself.
The minibus went past me, accelerating away. There were two men in it now. I was fairly sure the second man was Hill. There wasn’t any sign-writing on the minibus but I clocked the registration number, writing it on my hand as I’d left my QB50 in my car. Once the minibus was out of sight, I turned back towards my car. I wouldn’t be able to tail the minibus today but I could trace the registered keeper. I was now certain that Hill left for work around 04:00 hours and was picked up by minibus. I presumed that the minibus picked up several workers en route to their place of work. That would make tailing it a nightmare as it might make a dozen stops. On top of that the information in the letters had implied that Hill worked a long way from home.
As I got back into my car and wrote up my observations I mulled over my options. I could try tailing them the next day but there would be virtually no other vehicles on the road so early in the morning. I would probably only be able to witness one other pick-up each morning and would have to repeat the process the next day to tail them to the next location. This was the epitome of how inadequate our surveillance was. The police would have maybe a dozen officers and several vehicles on such a surveillance exercise and crack it in one day. I decided to check the registered owner and then consider how to progress this case.
Later in the morning I stopped off at the local police station. I had coffee with the LIO, Pete, who traced the registered keeper of the minibus. It was registered to a national van hire company. Another phone call revealed it was leased to another national company who did surface-dressing, better known as road re-surfacing. The words ‘you wouldn’t work the hours or travel the distance that he did’ now meant something! Unfortunately it was an industry known to use employees with ‘Mickey Mouse’ names. Any approach to them would need to be backed up with hard evidence of working and a witness statement from the site foreman or ganger identifying my man for payroll purposes. The chances were that they too would be on the fiddle.
I thought about asking if the traffic division could pull the minibus some morning once they had a few more men on board but decided against this. It was too direct and therefore could blow up in our faces if I was challenged about how I got the information. Then it dawned on me that we could ring the employer and ask where that crew were currently working. It was a bit risky but I reasoned that an office worker on the end of the phone would not feel the need to tip the wink to this particular team. After all, it was a national company with probably hundreds of people on the payroll, if not thousands. It was a risk worth taking in this case and I was pretty sure it was minimal. I was also certain that the result could have the maximum benefit. Pete said I could make the call.
As I expected, one phone call to the company did the trick. This crew were working on a stretch of the A229 just outside Maidstone. At a rough guess this was 50 or 60 miles away. If I had a sighting of Hill leaving the house and getting in the minibus I could later drive to Maidstone and nab him working on site. The problem was getting close enough to witness him leaving the house through the back door. I’d be spotted in the cul de sac and vulnerable with two against one. Intuition, or self preservation, was screaming at me that this was too risky. I left the police station wondering how to crack this case. We already had at least one very annoyed informant wanting action. But I didn’t fancy standing in the witness box giving evidence about how I had identified Hill on site in a bright yellow visual jacket, with tar all over his hands and face just like everybody else in the crew. A good barrister could make mincemeat of my testimony. What would make any one member of that team stand out as my man?
The following morning I repeated the observation and saw Hill picked up again with no problem. The day after, I went again but he didn’t show and nor did the minibus. It could be that the job had been finished by now; crews usually only spent a few days at each location as it didn’t take long to re-surface a stretch of road. On the off-chance, I decided to go through all the papers and notes in Hill’s file. I soon discovered that I had been given the wrong signing-on day for him. In fact, he was due to sign on that very day. I checked with the UBO (now called Jobcentre) and he had been in to sign, no work declared! That was an early start wasted! However in the papers I also found three forms that had been sent to Hill asking about receipt of Child Benefit. Hill had signed them but somebody else had written the answers to the questions. Bingo!
With these three forms in hand I visited his common-law wife. I called as she was doing the ironing. I asked where Darren Hill was and she said he was out looking for work. I then showed her the three forms I’d brought from the case papers. She confirmed it was Darren Hill’s signature on each. When I asked her who had written the answers on the forms she told me she had as Darren wasn’t very good at writing.
‘Did you know at the time you completed these forms that Darren was signing on as unemployed?’
‘Of course.’
‘Did you also know the basis of his claim to benefit was that he was not working?’
‘Yeh.’
I proceeded to caution her under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE). She became pretty agitated and asked me to leave. I had no choice but to terminate the interview. I left her with an appointment to call at the office and advised her that she might like to have a solicitor present. If so could she let me know when that would be? I didn’t manage to ask the all-important questions about his clothes being covered in tar and who did the washing, but since she was doing the ironing I did have a quick nosey around and spotted a few trousers that looked as if they were his work trousers; tar doesn’t wash out too well!
Before I got into the office the next morning the section had had a very irate Darren Hill on the phone wanting to know why I was threatening his wife. He left a message to ring him ASAP. I rang. He hadn’t gone to work today either. I explained that I was a special investigator and I had discovered that his wife knew that he was making a false claim to benefit and that she had played a part in the furtherance of his claim. As such, I was obliged to caution her under PACE which is exactly what I had done. I added that I had watched him leave the house at 04:00 hours and get picked up in the minibus. I gave him the details of the vehicle and added that I knew he had been working as part of a surface-dressing team on a section of the A229 near Maidstone. When I stopped talking his almost abusive tirade turned to a deathly silence. This was broken a moment later.
‘If you leave my missus out of it, I’ll come in and sort this out.’
I replied that I couldn’t, at this point, agree to drop my interest in the part his wife had played. However, what he was prepared to do could influence this. He pressed for an appointment that afternoon. While I didn’t want to see him then, I agreed a two o’clock appointment. This would give time for him to sweat and for me to get the forms he signed fortnightly from the UBO.
At two o’clock I called Darren Hill through and we sat down in an interview room. He immediately repeated that he wanted to keep his missus out of it. I went through the procedures, identifying myself, cautioning him and making sure he knew his rights. He agreed he had signed each relevant form that I put to him. He further admitted that he understood that he should have declared any work and any income from it. He admitted that the review claim he’d made when visited last year was false but said the original claim had been true because at that stage he was out of work. He made a full confession that he had been claiming benefits to which he was not entitled to for 15 months.
He also advised that he used the name of Harry Fuller at work and his employers only knew him by this name. He thought that the foreman must have known he was signing on as he took every other Thursday off. He was not prepared to go any further. I put a spread of allegations to him and advised that I would certainly be recommending that the department took him to court. He wanted to know what would happen next. I said that it would depend on the court. They would consider any previous offences. For my part, I would report that he had co-operated fully with the investigation. I suggested that he might still be entitled to some Housing Benefit (HB) since his earnings were not that high with a wife and four children to support. I told him he should make a fresh claim for Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit (CTB) revealing the truth.
Once again, he wanted to know if his wife was in the clear. I merely said it was not my decision but I would recommend that we did not prosecute her. I didn’t admit that I never really intended to pursue a case against her; it was a desperate ploy to crack this case and at least get the informant off our backs.
Our overpayment was calculated at just over £6,400 which was recoverable, but there were further overpaid benefits on his HB and CTB claims. The total would probably be near enough £9,000. I claimed a WBS (weekly benefit savings) of just under £160 including the HB and CTB, which amounted to a further £5,120 using the multiplier based on the average of 32 weeks. The prosecution with a guilty plea would hopefully act as a deterrent to others.
I set up part papers and sent them to our office who dealt with these employers, so that they could get a statement about the wages paid to Harry Fuller together with the address and National Insurance number they had on their records for him. In addition I asked them to obtain a list of names and addresses of all other employees working in our area. I hoped that when we checked we would find more false claims for benefit. In due course the part papers came back. I identified two other false claims for benefit both of whom signed off as starting work within a fortnight of my interview with Darren Hill alias Harry Fuller.
I checked out both claims and found that both had overpayments from failing to declare work done before I interviewed Hill. One overpayment was £806 and the other £1,024. Neither had used false names. I interviewed both these men but decided not to prosecute. The overpayments were recoverable and the claim papers would be noted that a warning had been given.
From the original anonymous letters I had achieved three cases with weekly benefit savings (WBS) of £343 and recoverable overpayments of nearly £12,000 in total. There was also another £10,976 in savings. But the most satisfying thing was the sense of getting the better of a man who bragged that we would never catch him! We never heard from the anonymous informant again. The court case brought a reasonable result with Hill being given a two-year suspended sentence. Recovery of the full overpayment was duly pursued; I believe that this wipes the smile off fraudsters’ faces every time. In the meantime, Hill’s suspended sentence would ensure he didn’t re-offend within at least two years. I was satisfied that this was a good result in view of his attitude and sent a clear message to others that we would catch them. | 