Welfare fraud
Welfare fraud is the act of illegally using state welfare systems by knowingly withholding or giving information to obtain more funds than would otherwise be allocated. This article deals with welfare fraud in various countries of the world, and includes many social benefit programs such as food assistance, housing, unemployment benefits, Social Security, disability, and medical. Each country's problems and programs are varied. Obtaining reliable evidence of welfare fraud is notoriously difficult. Apart from the obvious methodological problems, research reveals that interviewing performance is often mediocre, and may be anecdotal, misunderstood, or collected from opinionated or biased caseworkers. Interviews with non-citizen welfare recipients, where the interviewer has succeeded in gaining a high level of trust, have shown that a very high percent fail to report incomes. Official figures of the prevalence of welfare fraud based on government investigation tend to be low – a few percent of the total amount of welfare spending. Statistical research indicates that the vast majority of fraud is committed by businesses serving the recipients of government benefits. Welfare or benefits fraud committed by recipients is usually of very modest sums, and is committed by people who struggle with poverty; but once started it often continues after reaching financial stability. Welfare fraud in various countries Australia In Australia, entitlement reviews resulted in savings of AU$390.6 million in 2004–05. Austria Welfare fraud has been estimated to over 1.1 billion Euros, or 1.32% of total expenditures for social benefits between 2011 and 2013. 25% of welfare fraud is committed by foreigners, who make up 12.5% of the population. Canada In Canada, about 3.5% of total employment insurance expenditure was attributable to fraud and error in 2003. The total fraud and error rate in welfare allowances is estimated to be 3-5%. Denmark A day off qualifying period before sickness benefit may be claimed was introduced in 1985. It was abolished two years later when it turned out that employees instead reported themselves sick for more than one day. France In France, fraud estimates by the Family Branch (branche famille) amount to 2,000 to 3,000 cases per year. When asked whether they would take a black market job while receiving unemployments benefits, more than 85% answered yes if the risk of audit was , close to 50% if the risk was , and 6% if the risk was . Germany In 2015, 978,809 sanctions were imposed on people who received unemployment benefits. 75% were moderate sanctions for failure to report information. At least one sanction was imposed on 131,520 beneficiaries, or 3% of total. The German government has estimated that the amounts lost through welfare fraud were 6% of the amounts lost through tax avoidance and subvention fraud. German authorities assume that welfare fraud by relatively well-off people of Turkish origin is common, although there is no statistics concerning its scope. It is easy to register as indigent in Germany, although one may have financial assets in Turkey. In Braunschweig asylum seekers were able to defraud the government of £3