Benefit fraudsters made £1.5BILLION in fake claims after officials loosened checks to deal with Covid-19 applications rush

• Officials fear Universal Credit is being targeted by fraudsters and crime gangs
• Controls loosened so surge could be processed, including Internet ID checks
• Fears hundreds of millions of pounds worth of payments will be hard to trace  

Benefits fraudsters have made £1.5billion with fake claims for Universal Credit in recent weeks after checks were relaxed so staff could deal with the huge surge in coronavirus-related applications.

Officials fear some of the 2.1million people who applied for the benefit in the first full month of lockdown could have been individual fraudsters or representatives of organised criminal gangs.

During this period some processes were relaxed, including identity checks being conducted online rather than face-to-face and information like the cost of rent or whether someone had been self-employed taken on trust.

]

Officials fear some of the 2.1million people who applied for the benefit in the first full month of lockdown could have been individual fraudsters or representatives of organised criminal gangs. File photo of a Job Centre Plus 

The current level of fraud in the welfare system is 1.4%, but for Universal Credit this rises to 7.6%, a 27% increase year on year, reports the BBC.

The Department of Work and Pensions said the new measures had meant nine out of ten new applications had been paid out on time every month, and vowed it was tackling fraud.

However, one official warned that hundreds of millions of pounds had been handed out in advance payments, which were far harder to retrieve as the recipients often could not be traced.

A single person over 25 receives a standard allowance of £409.89, with extra payments for parents or people who are disabled.

A spokesman for the DWP said: 'Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of staff, since mid-March we've managed to process more than two million new claims for Universal Credit and pay 970,000 advances, getting hundreds of millions of pounds into the accounts of those in urgent need within days.

'We continue to monitor benefit fraud very closely and will relentlessly pursue the minority attempting to abuse the system using the full range of available powers, including prosecution through the courts.

'Our detection systems make use of increasingly sophisticated techniques to identify discrepancies and thwart those seeking to rip-off taxpayers.'

The number of people claiming benefits soared by a record 856,500 to 2.1million in the first full month of the coronavirus lockdown - despite the furlough scheme keeping millions in work.

Thousands of people have started making their way back to work this week after the Prime Minister (pictured on May 20) eased lockdown restrictions last Sunday

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said that claims under Universal Credit sky-rocketed by 69 per cent in April, as the country begins easing out of the draconian lockdown measures imposed in late-March.

Recently released figures also revealed that unemployment jumped by 50,000 to 1.35 million in the three months to March.

The dire numbers came despite Chancellor Rishi Sunak's job retention scheme that currently has 7.5 million people on furlough in efforts to prop up the economy during the pandemic.

Without the scheme, designed to help employers keep staff during the crisis, the benefits claims would likely be significantly higher.

Thousands of people have started making their way back to work this week after the Prime Minister eased lockdown restrictions last Sunday.

Mr Johnson emphasised last week he wants to kick-start the economy and get back to work, after dire forecasts last week that saw the economy shrink by 2 per cent.

It also announced that early estimates for April 2020 indicate that the number of paid employees fell by 1.6 per compared to March, as firms began to feel a greater impact from the lockdown