Woman lies to Centrelink 66 times to receive Parenting Payments
Date published
July 2017
Relevant impacts: Financial impact and business impact
A Queensland woman dishonestly obtained $35,015.53 in single parenting payments over a period of 3 years and 8 months. She repeatedly made false declarations of the income she received from her employment to Centrelink, whilst in receipt of Parenting Payment, to intentionally misrepresent her true circumstances. The woman was sentenced to 6 months in prison and was ordered to repay Centrelink $31,318.53.
Related fraudster personas
Related countermeasures
Use declarations or acknowledgments to both communicate and confirm that a person understands their obligations and the consequences for non-compliance. The declaration could be written or verbal, and should encourage compliance and deter fraud.
Verify any requests or claim information you receive with an independent and credible source.
Match data with the authoritative source and verify relevant details or supporting evidence.
Services such as the Identity Matching Service can be used to verify identity credentials back to the authoritative source when the information is an Australian or state and territory government issued identity credential.
This countermeasure is supported by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner's Guidelines on data matching in Australian government administration.
Require clients, staff and third parties to have ongoing compliance, performance and contract reviews.
These are processes that identify and recover debts owed by staff, customers and third parties.
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