‘Someone nicked my wages so I had to get involved in a £54m dole fraud’

A Bulgarian migrant who helped a gang rake in £54m from Britain’s biggest ever benefit fraud claimed he was ‘cheated out of his wages’ after he arrived in the country, a court heard. The Eastern European gang hijacked 6,000 identities to make claims for Universal Credit and used the names of children living in Bulgaria as part of the five year scam. They set up three ‘benefit factories’ across London churning out bogus tenancy agreements, counterfeit payslips and forged letters…