Social abuse in Austria: Fraud accepts alarming proportions!

Social abuse in Austria: Fraud accepts alarming proportions!

Steiermark, Österreich - In 2024, a concerned increase of 17.5 percent was registered with the advertisements due to social service fraud, as kosmo.at. The reason for this is increasingly incorrect information about the assets and residence as well as the silence of additional income. A relevant insight gives a case of a 47-year-old Syrian who traveled to Austria in 2022 and, despite a significant assets, received over 70,000 euros in social benefits. This example is currently being examined by the Taskforce for Social Affairs Fraud (TF Solbe).

The police describe developments in the field of social fraud as a new dimension. More and more perpetrators are only traveling to Austria for appointments at the labor market service (AMS) to obtain illegal social benefits. A curvy story along with the Syrian case is that of a 73-year-old woman from Styria: she married her second husband twelve times and divorced to collect widowing and terminated, causing damage of over 326,000 euros. This practice was stopped by the Supreme Court in 2024.

Investigations and judicial measures

Currently 316 cases of social service fraud in court are negotiated in court that affect different types of social benefits. The investigation into these cases is part of a comprehensive initiative to combat fraud cases in the social area, whereby the responsible authorities work closely together, such as tirol.orf.at. It is a specific answer to the significant increase in fraud cases in this sector.

In 2023, the investigative group of the Federal Criminal Police Office (BK) had significant successes. The uncovered or prevented damage is approximately 25.5 million euros, while around 4,650 perpetrators were researched. The clearance rate for different fraud forms is almost 100 percent. In 2023 there was a maximum of 4,457, with proactive control and sensitization of the population being mentioned as reasons for this increase.

Current challenges and measures

of a total of 20,000 suspects that have been identified since 2018 are omitted by 1,250 to accused of Austrian citizenship, while 3,394 non-Austrian citizens are affected. Perpetrators from Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine are particularly common. The Taskforce Solbe focuses on sham residential seats and has cataloged more than 50 different forms of inspection of social service fraud that are discovered. Among the familiar fraud cases there are also several examples of perpetrators who received over 66,000 euros in illegal services.

In addition, the Taskforce SOLE is also supported by targeted actions, data evaluations and controls at airports in order to further improve the detection of fraud cases. Information from the population can be submitted via the "Solbe registration button" on the website of the Federal Criminal Police Office. The situation remains tense, while the authorities still have to react to developments. The challenges in the fight against social fraud constantly adapted strategies, since the perpetrators are constantly developing new methods to abuse the system, such as bmi.gv.at reports.