Slamming the door on housing fraudsters Five ways to detect social housing fraud

Transcription

1 Slamming the door on housing fraudsters Five ways to detect social housing fraud 1

2 Contents: Introduction Section 1: Section 2: Section 3: Section 4: Section 5: The size of the housing fraud challenge & the five main types of housing fraud How effective intelligence gathering can help & how to spot the five main types of housing fraud How HooYu Investigate helps build intelligence in housing fraud investigations Business case Recommendations 2

3 Introduction Last year local authorities detected and prevented 75,000 fraud cases, saving the public purse 336.2m 1, according to figures released by CIPFA, the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. The highest value area of fraud is housing fraud with an estimated total of 263.4m. This equates to approximately 80% of the 336m that was saved from housing fraud. By giving housing fraud investigation teams more data, more tools and better processes to build more intelligence, local government can reduce the burden on the public purse from social housing fraud. As a specialist provider of investigation and intelligence tools, the team at HooYu has written this report to share: Insight into the typologies of social housing fraud The signs to watch for housing fraud How to use the HooYu Investigate platform to build intelligence, speed-up investigations and uncover social housing fraud. 1 Source = %C2%A3336,-d-,2m-worth-of-fraud 3

4 Section 1: The social housing fraud challenge As of June 2016, there were 73,120 households in temporary accommodation, estimated to cost an average of 15,000 per year for each family 2. At the same time an estimated 1.9 million families throughout England and Scotland were on council housing waiting lists 3. An Audit Commission report revealed that tenancy fraud is costing the taxpayer over 1.8 billion a year 4. This represents a potential scale of fraud that affects as many as one in five council homes, this equates to 160,000 fraudulent social housing tenants in London alone. Five most common types of social housing/tenancy fraud: X 1. OBTAINING HOUSING BY DECEPTION Where a person gets a council home by giving false information in their application such as lying about income, assets or not telling authorities that they have a council house elsewhere. 2. UNLAWFUL SUB-LETTING Where a tenant lets out the whole of their house or flat. Often, they will be charging a higher rent than the council and so making a profit for themselves. It is illegal to profit from a property that could be given to someone with higher priority. 3. WRONGLY CLAIMED SUCCESSION When a tenant dies there are rules about who can, if anyone, take over or succeed, the tenancy. Wrongly claimed succession is when someone who is not entitled tries to take over the tenancy, for example, by saying they had been living at the address before the tenant died. Or someone may not have applied to succeed to the tenancy but just hope that they can stay on in the property. 4. NON-OCCUPATION & KEY SELLING Where the tenant doesn t occupy the property as their principal home, they may visit to collect post but do not properly live at the address. This is where a resident is paid to pass on their keys in return for a one-off payment. X 5. FALSE RIGHT TO BUY/RIGHT TO ACQUIRE This is where a tenant resident makes a right to buy or right to acquire application and gives false information in their application. 2 As of June 2016, there were 73,120 households in temporary accommodation, estimated to cost an average of 15,000 per year for each family An Audit Commission report revealed that tenancy fraud is costing the taxpayer over 1.8 billion a year. 4

5 Section 2: How effective intelligence gathering can help Councils know that those involved in housing fraud and unlawful subletting sometimes chance their hand and can be easily uncovered using simple database checks. On the other hand, tenancy fraudsters often go to great lengths to prevent discovery, and this is where investigations demand effective intelligence gathering. Local Authorities have reported that investigators with access to specialist tools are generally more successful at tackling tenancy fraud than housing officers who do not have access to the same intelligence. Intelligence and data points such as Electoral Roll records, length of residence, co-occupant data, previous addresses, property ownership information, addresses, phone numbers all need to be obtained electronically. Once these are obtained, it is up to the investigator to analyse this information and connect the dots and discover links between the relevant intelligence. This can be especially difficult if pseudonyms or misleading data has been provided. 5

6 Here are the signs to look for to help housing officers detect housing fraud: X 1. OBTAINING HOUSING BY DECEPTION Evidence of other current address Evidence of partner/spouse owning another property Intelligence on assets such as shareholdings The use of fake identity/documents The inability to gain access to properties to carry out gas safety checks New people being associated with the property such as phone numbers or new database name & address results 2. UNLAWFUL SUB-LETTING 3. WRONGLY CLAIMED SUCCESSION Mortality flags Change of utilities registration Evidence of other current address 4. NON-OCCUPATION & KEY SELLING Evidence of other current address Evidence of partner/spouse owning another property New people being associated with the property such as phone numbers or new database name & address result and mobile numbers being associated with address that bears no relationship to the social housing tenant name Large amounts of credit accumulating on a rent account Council Tax arrears New people being associated with the property such as phone numbers or new database name & address results Mail being unread/accumulating and Mobile numbers being associated with address that bears no relationship to the social housing tenant name Change of utilities registration X 5. FALSE RIGHT TO BUY/RIGHT TO ACQUIRE Evidence of other current address Evidence of partner/spouse owning another property Evidence of assets such as property ownership The use of fake identity or suspicious documents Conducting investigations can be time consuming and gathering the required intelligence from fraud investigations can be an extremely difficult task. Investigations can be harder to conduct as investigators often need to investigate data in isolation and not a physical address. 6

7 Section 3: Business Case for HooYu Investigate HooYu Investigate is a web-based platform that links UK people, businesses and addresses together in a visual graph that reveals otherwise hidden connections. This makes for faster more effective investigations. Traditional investigation tools tend to be in list format, making it very hard to discern relevant links between data elements. HooYu Investigate is different. We connect 180 million people records, 14 million business records, 32 million UK addresses. Plus, 30 million mobile phone numbers, and 27 million landline numbers in a single graph comprising of trillions of interconnecting links. HooYu Investigate is up to 10x faster than traditional investigation tools, enabling investigators to dive deeper into data than ever before, conducting comprehensive investigations, starting with just a small piece of intelligence. Our unique graphical interface allows investigators to discover hidden connections between suspected fraudsters. Users can traverse the graph in any direction of interest and across multiple degrees of separation from the subject. Using HooYu Investigate has saved us time and money and put the intelligence in the hands of the people who need it most We can now easily see the information clearly and also explore the information. For example, we can now discover name variations or business structures and connections that would have taken significant time to find in a matter of seconds. 7

8 Section 4: Business Case for HooYu Investigate BUILD MORE INTELLIGENCE BY UNCOVERING HIDDEN LINKS Untangles records to reveal intelligence that would previously take hours of analysis to uncover Identify name changes and false companies house data Shortest Path to show how one piece of data is connected to another piece of data SPEED Time-saving in having all the data in one interface Faster to recognise which is the correct thread to follow and record to focus on Speed discerning relevant connections thanks to visualisation Investigators frequently comment that HooYu Investigate is 10x faster than the traditional investigation services All the resources in one place Now with flags to indicate that a property is/used to be a council home COST One vendor to manage Cost savings in procurement 8

9 Section 5: Recommendations This report covers various aspects of the scale and investigation aspects of social housing fraud in 2018, here are the key learnings and recommendations: Local Authorities should provide a fraud investigation service to housing associations Local Authorities should conduct an initial fact-based investigation before recommending eligibility for housing Local Authorities should consider re-prioritizing housing benefit fraud resource to investigate housing tenancy fraud. The Government should consider further incentivising Local Authorities to investigate and recover unlawfully sublet properties Investigations should be conducted into known fraudsters and their associates even if not housing fraud related as the fraud overlap is substantial. Provide investigators with the tools and intelligence needed to prevent fraud and protect social housing fraud, by using HooYu Investigate, intelligence can be gathered faster and often missed information can be highlighted. 9

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