Dodgy NDIS providers and charlatans have been put on notice as the government pushes through $110 million in fraud detection enhancements.
The Crack Down on Fraud program will receive a $110.4 million funding boost and follows an initial $83.9 million investment made earlier this year to help officials better detect and prevent the exploitation of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
During the last six months the National Disability Insurance Agency has partnered with other agencies, including the NDIS Commission and the Australian Federal Police, to execute search warrants on multiple residential and commercial premises.
Retiring NDIS Minister Bill Shorten said, that since launching in February this year, the program has identified more than 2100 providers with "problematic claiming behaviours".
Previously, these providers had been able to make claims and be automatically paid.
Now they have been detected, none of these providers can be paid unless they undertake a Manual Payment Review for every claim.
Many of them are now subject to further historic audits or criminal prosecutions.
Dozens of warrants targeting dodgy businesses and providers have been executed, preventing more than $400 million from being fraudulently diverted from genuine NDIS participants.
The government said a further $200 million in savings was also delivered to the scheme.”
Further system enhancements are expected to roll out throughout next year.
“I want to ensure that criminals aren’t able to exploit the NDIS, rip off taxpayers and, most importantly, attempt to skim money off the hundreds of thousands of Australians who rely on the life-changing scheme,” Mr Shorten said in a statement on Saturday.
The funding boost is part of a government fraud crackdown after a budget scrutiny hearing was told earlier this year that $2 billion of NDIS spending was not used for genuine needs.
Parliament heard revelations taxpayer funds had been wasted on illegal drugs, cars and holidays.
Some providers allegedly forced participants to give cash to criminals for drugs and encouraged them to engage in fraud, with tens of thousands of dollars spent on holidays and $73,000 on a luxury car.
Laws aimed at trimming spending on the disability support scheme later cleared the lower house of federal parliament in June.
