Benefit fraud is at a five-year high but the number of people being prosecuted is falling.
Ministry of Social Development records, obtained by the Otago Daily Times through the Official Information Act, reveal the number of successful prosecutions across the country has halved over the past five years.
But the ministry said it was not that offenders were getting away with it, nor a reluctance to take legal action or an increased threshold to do so, but rather it was a testament to its "early intervention".
This year there have been 5751 cases but only 30 successful prosecutions, which includes crimes from as long ago as 2004.
MSD group general manager of client service support George van Ooyen said because any financial impropriety was being flagged early, cases were resolved before the need for prosecution.
"The ministry’s overall approach to managing allegations of benefit fraud is to intervene early when concerns are raised, to make it easy for clients to do the right thing ... while still responding appropriately to serious fraud," Mr van Ooyen said.
"Where we see evidence of long-term, persistent, and deliberate fraud, then we may prosecute."
He stressed there was no direct correlation between the number of prosecutions and the number of cases in a single year as there was often a delay between discovering fraud and the case being finalised in court.
This month, 47 people were before the courts and 28 who had been sentenced for fraud relating to the wage-subsidy scheme, he said.
In the Dunedin District Court this year Dylan Kenneth Tracy Mansell, 30, was sentenced to five months’ home detention after defrauding the ministry for the second time in a decade.
The court heard he was receiving the Jobseeker Support benefit despite being employed during the offending.
He was overpaid $20,000 in two years.
In 2017, he was sentenced to 240 hours’ community work after illegally claiming $11,277 for almost identical offending.
Mr van Ooyen said the prosecution threshold had not changed and the ministry continued to abide by the solicitor-general’s prosecution guidelines, which were due to be updated this year.
"Overall, the number of cases responded to ... has remained stable over the last five years," he said.
"A greater proportion are now responded to without investigation or prosecution."
Mr van Ooyen said the number of cases had spiked this year due to more staff returning to work on benefit fraud since the end of the Covid-19 wage-subsidy scheme.
The ministry had a dedicated team which identified emerging fraud risks and trends and their use of data and analytics had improved over the past five years, he said.
"Investigation completion rates are back at pre-Covid levels. Higher overall cases completed in 2023/24 is due to an increase in non-investigative responses," Mr van Ooyen said.
"It’s important that the welfare system remains fair for all New Zealanders and that people do not take advantage of it."
Cases have noticeably dropped off in southern courts, but the ministry was not able to provide data organised by region as benefit fraud commonly occurred over long periods, during which clients might have moved.
