Over 12,000 applications for NSW Government’s COVID-19 support grants have still not been paid as it has been suspected that they came from would-be fraudsters.
Service NSW CEO Damon Rees told a budget estimate hearing on Monday that up to 20 per cent of applications for some COVID-19 support grants schemes were suspected to be fraudulent.
“And we’ve seen other programs where the rate is much lower … it does very much vary on the specifics of the program,” he said.
Because of the attempts to weed out fraud from government grants, thousands of applications across multiple programs are still to be finalised as they are triaged for fraud assessments.
During the hearing, it was found that the test and isolate program that provided $320 for workers who had to isolate while they waited for the results of a COVID test saw a “significant level of attempted fraud”.
Questions on the actual percentage of fraudulent applications were taken on notice to be answered at a later date.
“The assessment of fraud is a complicated task, it does take some time,” ServiceNSW CEO Rees said.
A lot of the applications for the test and isolate program received by the department have not been paid because of the suspected fraud. Meanwhile, some had been rejected while others were still waiting to be assessed.
One challenge of managing fraud was the significant analysis and confirmation with customers to determine whether an application was fraudulent or just incorrectly submitted.
Customer Service Minister Victor Dominello acknowledged there was room for improvement in the imperfect process. However, he revealed that the majority of the people who applied for the COVID-19 support grants had received them.
Minister Dominello has previously described the attempts to fraud grant packages as “akin to looting”.
Suspected fraud identified by ServiceNSW is referred to police for investigation.
NSW Police have brought a number of charges in recent months related to attempted and actual fraud of government grants.
A man who allegedly submitted $530,000 worth of fraudulent grant applications, receiving $320,000, was charged in December.
Last month, a woman was charged for attempting to defraud multiple grant schemes, including the test and isolate payments.
With AAP