...our home-grown criminals don't want to commit:
Further investigations revealed the gang, all Lithuanians, received stolen cars taken from homes across London and the Home Counties.
And meanwhile, for those without the work ethic that lets them go out stealing cars 9 to 5...
A gang of Ukrainian illegal immigrants enjoyed a lavish lifestyle of expensive cars and luxury apartments after swindling £4.5million from the tax office by using false identities to claim tax rebates.
Yup, it's the hapless clowns at HMRC who are getting the flack for this one:
A judge criticised the ease at which the gang was able to dupe HM Revenue and Customs by using 'flawless' identity documents and setting up bogus bogus firms to appear as employers on the doctored self assessment forms.
5 comments:
Have you read "McMafia" by Misha Glenny? Scary.
Compare the ease with which these villains screwed millions out of HMRC with the months of hassle I had to get HMRC to cancel the £100 fine for (non)late filing of my corporate annual return. But, of course, I'm law-abiding, pay my taxes, have a fixed address and, worst of all, am English: the perfect target for legal terrorism.
"Have you read "McMafia" by Misha Glenny?"
Think I saw an extract from it in a Sunday paper (the 'Observer'?). Frightening how well-organised they are, and how quick to turn to violence.
"Compare the ease with which these villains screwed millions out of HMRC with the months of hassle I had to get HMRC to cancel the £100 fine for (non)late filing of my corporate annual return."
I've got friends in HMRC and they (being ex-Customs) are less than charitable about the capabilities on the ex-Revenue staff.
So that doesn't surprise me one little bit...
JuliaM
I assume your "ex-Customs" friends are in the bit of HMRC which runs VAT (which, before the merger, was a "customs" responsibility). If so, they've got nothing to boast about. Because of the size of VAT fraud (overseen but not controlled by what used to be HM Customs and Excise), registering for VAT has become a (very) extended nightmare: de-registering is worse. Again, it's the law-abiding traders who suffer while, for instance, carousel fraud - which appears to be a feature rather than a bug in the system - carries on.
Some of them, yes. They told me horror stories about the scale of so-called 'missing trader' fraud that would curl your hair!
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