Time to rage: Conwy sisters tried to claim £161m in VAT, court hears

I'm shocked. Actually I'm not. I'm surprised they've actually been caught.
 
You've got to have a certain amount of admiration for the sheer chutzpah and stupidity of trying to claim a VAT refund of £161m, very loosely that would mean they'd have have had to paid out about £1bn for that to be possible. At what point do you not start to think "hold on Sis, this is getting a bit out of hand now as they'll never believe it". That's either thick, greedy or both and I'm somewhat thankful for that sort of thing as if it wasn't for many criminals not being amongst the sharpest tools in the box there'd be fewer of them caught.
 
Multi-Million Pound Tax Fiddles and false Claims? Can't have the peons playing that game, that's for the Super-Rich only! How very dare they! ;)
 
semi-pro waster said:
You've got to have a certain amount of admiration for the sheer chutzpah and stupidity of trying to claim a VAT refund of £161m, very loosely that would mean they'd have have had to paid out about £1bn for that to be possible. At what point do you not start to think "hold on Sis, this is getting a bit out of hand now as they'll never believe it".
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I think if they told me they'd spent it all on pies then, looking at the picture of the fat ****, I'd actually be inclined to go along with it.

Disgusting waste of a human being - just a lazy lump of lard happy to defraud the rest of society.
 
doofer said:
Multi-Million Pound Tax Fiddles and false Claims? Can't have the peons playing that game, that's for the Super-Rich only! How very dare they! ;)
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I suppose the key difference between these two idiots and, say, a billionaire trying to reduce his tax bill is that its his money in the first place.
 
Dj_Jestar said:
Civil service failure, after civil service failure, after civil service failure.
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Government failure is what I'd put it more squarely at. Politically led big IT programmes would probably be a good start.

People who work in those departments hate seeing it as much as you do. Try to remember that. It is sometimes impossible for them to see it or if they can sometimes then isn't the resources to do as much about it as you would like.
 
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I don't understand how they managed to carry this out to the scale they did. What sort of false claim scam by two people nets you the amount they are alleged to have stolen?. How does that work?.
 
Draeger said:
I don't understand how they managed to carry this out to the scale they did. What sort of false claim scam by two people nets you the amount they are alleged to have stolen?. How does that work?.
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I doubt they got anywhere near the refund. I think it was trying to claim £161m that brought their activities to the fore.

What sort of claims? Well, since it's VAT it isn't really relating to any benefit claims but a percentage of sales of goods or services. So, they've been doing business with multi millionaires and billionaires near enough... apparently according the figure. So I don't know, weapons dealing? :D
 
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Quite surprised that never got picked up sooner, given my understanding of the benefit systems (I work for DWP/jobcentreplus).

Checking whether someone gets Working Tax Credits and Incapacity Benefit is not a difficult task for someone with the right system access. As taxpayers, you may be pleased to know that there is significantly more 'cross checking' that goes on with all new claims, things get picked up all the time. It really must have been a *very* systematic and organised fraud to net the amount that it did!

One problem inherent to the current system is that tax credits are dealt with by HMRC and other benefits by DWP, yes there is cross checking but its not as straightforward as if you had one government department handling it all and thus the ability to cross check is a little more complex (though like I said, still not difficult if you are tasked to check as a matter of course). Roll on universal credit however....and things should improve.
 
Biohazard said:
I doubt they got anywhere near the refund. I think it was trying to claim £161m that brought their activities to the fore.

What sort of claims? Well, since it's VAT it isn't really relating to any benefit claims but a percentage of sales of goods or services. So, they've been doing business with multi millionaires and billionaires near enough... apparently according the figure. So I don't know, weapons dealing? :D
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Maybe they are prostitutes to very wealthy black men/arms dealers in Africa.
 
Originally Posted by Dj_Jestar

Civil service failure, after civil service failure, after civil service failure.
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Hang on a minute - by the sounds of that story it actually sounds like they got very little out of the state - attempting to claim £161m back in VAT is a lot different than actually being paid £161m. I could claim £200m tomorrow - doesn't mean it's going to work.

Sounds like most of the money was acquired through defrauding banks, ins companies etc.
 
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Biohazard said:
So, they've been doing business with multi millionaires and billionaires near enough... apparently according the figure. So I don't know, weapons dealing? :D
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Nah, it'll be a VAT carrousel scheme meaning fake companies and fake invoices.
 
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