ACC ENCOURAGES THE ENTRAPMENT OF COMPENSATION RECIPIENTS

Date of article: 30 October 2002

Recent files handled by our advocacy service highlight the unethical manner by which ACC employs and encourages private investigators to entrap ACC recipients into carrying out fraudulent activities.

When an investigation takes place, often as a result of anonymous and unsubstantiated information being provided to ACC the investigators approach their prey in a manner that is duplicitous and completely unethical. Certainly in the American Courts the practice of entrapment is completely frowned on. Why not here?

As examples of this behaviour a Stokes Valley ACC recipient had an ACC investigator turn up on his front door seeking a cheap repair to the door handle to his car. The investigator spun a story about needing to get the car up to scratch ready for sale because he was splitting up with his wife and he had to finalise the assets from the relationship. The ACC recipient agreed to get the small job done to the door handle and quoted the investigator $40.00 for the job. On picking up the car the investigator made out he was so pleased that he gave the ACC recipient $50.00. At the fraud investigation interview that ensued the ACC recipient was able to explain how he knew there was something fishy but that he had not done the job himself but had got a friend to do it for $20.00. The joke was on the investigator who had coughed up $30.00 that he need not have.

Another file disclosed in his written report that an investigator posed as a false purchaser of commercial kitchen equipment to try and trap an ACC recipient in trading commodities with the investigator. The investigators report disclosed how he went about giving a false name and references in his telephone communications with the ACC recipient.

The moral of these stories is the Corporation has no qualms about employing investigators who are prepared to lie and cheat in order to trap a person into breaking the law. If anybody is fraudulently depriving ACC by their activities it is the substance of the activities that are reported to ACC that are required to be investigated NOT creating further false activities by enticing ACC recipients in the name of justice.

Interestingly enough the writer emailed the Minister prior to the election questioning whether, as the Minister responsible for the Corporation she approved of the investigative methods being employed by the fraud investigation unit of ACC. To date there has not been so much as the courtesy of a response.

Article contributed by: D V [Mike] Dixon-McIver

Advkit Para Legal Services