Australian government minister Bill Shorten has vowed to put an end to the fraud that is hurting the federal government’s National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), which results more than $1.5 billion (US$1.06 billion) in loss a year.
The announcement comes after a report by The Herald Sun on Sunday revealed that criminal syndicates are targeting NDIS, obtaining Australians’ personal information to produce false invoices, inflated bills, and ghost payments. The Australian Crime and Intelligence Commission has said that as much as 5 percent of the $29 billion (US$20.54 billion) scheme has been lost to fraud.
Speaking to the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday, Shorten said that these are “the same people in organised crime who were taking money out of the family day care scheme.”…