The town of Cologne, on the right bank of the Rhine, shines in the sun of a March day. Appraisers estimate the current value of the property at at least 600,000 euros. The neighbors do not know that the Mihailovic clan (name changed) partially financed the house and garden with state support. No one knows that the clan belongs to a Balkan network that exempts wealthy elderly people throughout the country. According to the indictment against five main actors, the clan lived a set of values ​​based on criminal offenses and an internal penal code in case of misconduct.

According to the responsible Cologne prosecutor, the defendant's understanding of the law “was characterized by a rejection… of the German legal system”, which is why the relatives considered the “non-Roma” as an enemy.

Clan would have improperly received social benefits worth 109,670 euros

In any case, the transfers from the city of Cologne and the employment agency were always received on time. Rental subsidies and other aid ranged from 274 to 820 euros per month. According to the accusation, all social benefits, a total of 109,670 euros, were received improperly. The family is said to have used the money to partially pay off the loan on their property in Cologne, which they bought 15 years ago for 280,000 euros. The property was also lavishly decorated, with marble in the living room and a garden house outside.

The clan defrauded the state with simple means

Nobody noticed the dizziness. The clan used simple tricks to slim down the state authorities. For example, the daughter of the head of the family apparently issued rental contracts for clan members, which were then presented to the employment office, according to official documents. And payments were made, for up to eleven years. Nobody looked in the place. Surely then the fraud would have been discovered.

Especially since the family openly flaunted their status. The supposedly needy head of the Serbian clan drove a Porsche Cayenne or a Porsche Panamera. During the June 2020 raid, investigators also confiscated expensive Rolex watches worth €14,700, almost €17,000 in cash was found hidden in a sock, and the family's youngest daughter was sucking on a pacifier with a real gold chain on it. the room of the kids. . Pure luxury, under the eyes of the social authorities. After a few months, the accused were released. As the judges continued to change, the trial has not yet been scheduled to begin. The clan still lives in the town of Colonia and no one knows how they make a living.

Social services do not always carefully examine these cases

There are no valid figures on fraud in social benefits. Publicly available information alone on the misuse of citizens' money varies between almost 90,000 and almost 120,000 cases. Oliver Huth, director of the German Criminal Police Association (BDK) in North Rhine-Westphalia, assumes that the number of unreported cases is significantly higher, especially in the area of ​​organized crime. “Unfortunately, it is becoming more and more common that, on the one hand, there are criminal family structures in which every crime imaginable is committed because the rule of law is not accepted.” and unfairly charged.” The fact that employment offices or the social welfare office do not always analyze these cases carefully is “unfortunately a virulent problem.”

Huth gives several reasons. On the one hand, there is often no staff available to carry out, for example, home visits. The police only receive information about suspects' social benefits “when we request it from the prosecutor's office, that is, when we can already justify a corresponding suspicion of fraud.” Ultimately, organized fraud also discredits “the people who have the right to receive support,” Huth says angrily: “In the end, we will have a huge problem with legal peace and the acceptance of democracy if the state does not function at this point.” “

We have a big advantage when it comes to the abuse of social benefits.

The traffic light federal government will set aside a total of 44 billion euros for citizens' money in 2024. Plenty of room for fraud and cheating. The scope of social fraud is multi-faceted: the perpetrators are German and foreign. Some families in EU countries, particularly in south-eastern Europe, are defrauding child benefit funds in the Ruhr area and elsewhere. “Through various investigations it has been shown that we have a big flank in the area of ​​abuse of social benefits,” explains Achim Schmitz, head of the Organized Crime Department (OK) of the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) of North Rhineland. -Westphalia.

Most of them are Romanian and Bulgarian families who traveled to Germany as part of the EU's freedom of movement regulation to collect social benefits, sometimes illegally. “These people come from the poorest regions of their countries. They are made to believe that in the rich West they will be better served,” explains Schmitz. “Deep down, some speculators pull the strings and make a lot of money from the scam.”

Schmitz explained that the modus operandi is extremely simple: “Masterminds often take advantage of people with a low educational level to go to Germany, submit applications for help to the social authorities and then defraud government subsidies with false information,” reports the OC-Jefe newspaper.

Immigrants are exploited

Some families were then sent home with the lie that local authorities had not recognized them as aid recipients. “In fact, the state coffers go into accounts that bosses can use as they see fit,” says the criminal director. Employment offices or social assistance offices never find out that Romanian or Bulgarian families have long ago left Germany. “However, many families remain in Germany and are exploited by criminal fraud bosses,” says Schmitz. “Some of them maintain fictitious employment relationships or are used to defraud more government subsidies.”

In the fight against organized fraud in the field of social benefits, the LKA NRW has developed the “MISSIMO” model. The project aims, in particular, to uncover the abuse of child benefits by immigrants from EU countries in south-eastern Europe. In this way, a Romanian gang that received benefits for 96 children, although they did not live in Germany, was dismantled in Wuppertal. In April 2022, the Cologne Regional Court convicted a Roma family member from Romania of tax evasion and illegal receipt of child benefits. In total, the perpetrators stole more than 700,000 euros using false registration documents.

Members of the Kurdish-Lebanese Al Zein clan raised Hartz IV money for years. Boss Badia Al Zein financed a villa in the city of Leverkusen through one of his sons. While the family of eight could expect subsidies from the public sector, the branch of the clan hid horrendous assets on their property. In a raid carried out in June 2021, 360,000 euros in cash and jewelry were found. The proceeds apparently came from criminal transactions.

Well-organized criminal gangs use simple means to circumvent the welfare state

After all, Badia Al Zein was considered number 2 in the family union, which was estimated to have 3,000 members nationwide. Although the boss has just served six years in prison, his relatives continue to live in the Rhenish town. The prosecution has requested the confiscation of the property. “But as long as one of the sons continues to appeal the sentence, the building will remain property of the family,” explained a spokesman for the prosecutor's office.

Radical Islamic Salafist circles and well-organized criminal gangs in particular use simple means to circumvent the welfare state. In the large complex against at least 70 refugees, mostly Syrians, who had created an illegal hawala banking system, the two Düsseldorf bosses transferred a good 120 million euros to Turkey and the Middle East. Some of the money came from drug traffickers and was delivered to the appropriate recipients in the Bosphorus.

The fraudsters sometimes collected two million euros a year. And yet they were happy to take state support with them. They soon brought with them their families, second wives and their children. Since 2016, one of the two bosses has defrauded the employment office of 138,000 euros and has also collected almost 1,600 euros per month in family allowance for his six children. Even school lunches were funded by the public sector. If the OC investigators had not learned of the existence of the financial gangsters, the fraud on the social authorities would continue to this day.

Last year, a Syrian terrorist was sentenced to a long prison sentence. He had fought for a terrorist militia in his homeland. The jihadists arrived with the wave of refugees in March 2015. From then on he worked as a brutal money collector for Syrian financial gangsters and acted as a justice of the peace in clan disputes. He is also said to have organized smuggling from Syria. In time, Abu Ali brought his two wives and children to Germany. The family of eleven lived on two floors of two apartments in Wuppertal. Paid by the employment office.