The Bulgarian gang behind Britain's biggest welfare fraud will have to pay back just £2m of the £53m stolen despite admitting to moving money abroad. This was reported by the "Daily Telegraph" newspaper, citing a prosecutor's hearing in court at the end of December.
Galina Nikolova, Tsvetka Todorova, Gunesh Ali, Patricia Paneva and Stoyan Stoyanov were sentenced to a total of 25 years in prison in 2024 at the court in the London district of "Wood Green". All the gang members, except Ali, have now been released from prison and are on immigration bail awaiting deportation. They were due to be deported months ago but have not been allowed to leave until confiscation proceedings against them are concluded.
Following their arrests, prosecutors seized around £1m in cash from the defendants' home addresses but are pursuing the gang for further money held in properties and bank accounts. The gang made bogus claims for benefits under the so-called "Universal Credit" scheme using a set of forged documents using the identities of real people living in Bulgaria who were complicit in the scheme and received a share of the money.
According to prosecutors, the actual amount stolen is well in excess of £53m. "Daily Telegraph" quoting Bulgarian police who believe the fraudsters made around £200m a year.
The newspaper reported that at a court hearing in December, prosecutor Gareth Mundy outlined the efforts of the Crown Prosecution Service and the Department for Work and Pensions to recover the money. He said there was a problem with returning the money, explaining that the total amount of money stolen was not the amount received directly by the gang. They took a cut of the money when they processed claims for people in Bulgaria, and in effect acted as "agents", so a defendant cannot be held liable under the Proceeds of Crime Act for amounts they did not receive themselves.
Gareth Mundy said some of the money had been transferred to bank accounts "set up for the purposes of these claims", but they had failed to link it to the defendants. Thus, although it is known that the defendants have properties in Bulgaria and probably hold large sums in banks, some in cryptocurrencies, in practice the amounts that can actually be claimed from them are significantly smaller.