FRAUDS DETECTED

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 440, 22 May 1937, Page 7

FRAUDS DETECTED

SUSTENANCE PAYMENTS Departmental Investigation Press Association- —Copyright. Auckland, May 21. Investigations now being made by the Employment Branch of the Labour Department at Auckland reveal that frauds on employment promotion funds have been carried out on an amazingly widespread scale by means of false declarations and impersonations. Many hundreds of men have been drawing sustenance payments to which they were not entitled, and it would appear that a knowledge of fraudulent methods by which the funds could be plundered must have been common knowledge among a relatively large section of the unemployed. The department is spreading a wide and comprehensive net, recently doubling the size of its investigating staff, but whatever are its conclusions on .the subject the fact seems manifest that greater legislative safeguards and penalties for sustenance frauds are an imperative necessity. On March 22 last the department exercised a check at a pay-out of retrospective wages to non-union waterside workers. The men were then required to produce their unemployment, levy books as evidence of identity and a large number of frauds were then detected, but it (was clear that word was soon circulated regard mg the check and to-day there Is a sum of about £lOOO still awaiting claimants. No less than 800 men have claims on this sum and while it would be wrong to assume that all are remaining in the background because of a sense of guilt, the view is inescapable that reluctance of a big proportion to claim possession prises from a sense of belated caution. Apart altogether from this highly suspicious aspect cases involving 422 men have been investigated since the hep-inning of the year in which the jrtp^rtm o nt is confident that its in cririps have clearlv established the e v iste’ i c« of frauds in respect of these men. It claims that the sum of £2249 has wrongfully been taken from sustenance funds. Furthermore, it is now checking 650 additional cases and so far its investigations have convinced it that 57 men have been drawing under two or three names each. This investigation has some way yet to go before completion.