DATA checks have revealed a surge in the number of private care homes who carry on getting public cash after failing to report residents have died.
The latest National Fraud Initiative (NFI) found 100 cases of overpayments to care providers worth more than £865,000 in 2016/17.
The previous NFI in 2014/15 found just eight cases involving £103,000.
All the monies have now been recovered.
Led by public spending watchdog Audit Scotland, the latest crackdown uncovered a total of £18.6m in fraud and error, with £4.8m of overpayments recovered so far.
The biennial exercise involved 96 public bodies cross-referencing data sets to see if people and companies were getting money they weren’t entitled to.
It resulted in 4,802 council tax discounts being cut or removed; 280 occupational pensions cut or stopped; 4,505 blue badges stopped or flagged for future checks; and 710 housing benefit payments stopped or reduced.
The data matches which generated the most savings were pensions at £6.3m, council tax discounts at £4.4m, blue badges at £2.6m, and benefits at £2.1m.
People wrongly claiming the 25 per cent single occupier discount for council tax was common, with one women in Midlothian found to have been claiming it on her council home while her brother lived in it, and she and her husband lived in a rented house elsewhere.
When the woman tried to buy her council home, her application was cancelled, she missed out on a £15,000 discount, and her brother was billed for £1743 in unpaid tax.
In another case of data matching, an applicant for a taxi licence in East Dunbartonshire was found to have a home in Glasgow and a tenancy in Milton Keynes, which led to Milton Keynes Council recovering their property.
Fiona Kordiak, Director of Audit Services said: "Systems underpinning public spending are complex and errors can happen.
"There are also some individuals who seek to exploit the systems and fraudulently obtain services to which they are not entitled.
"What these latest results demonstrate is the value of data matching to Scotland's public finances at a time when budgets continue to be under pressure."
Donald MacAskill, chief executive of Scottish Care, which represents care homes, said there had been “an issue in some areas” with overpayments, but most cases were related to complications, including the NHS failing to inform homes if a person had died in hospital.
Inconsistent rules on death notifications had also caused “confusion” in some places.
He said: “The National Care Home Contract uniquely in Scotland has very clear set of criteria for payment after death and all providers who accept public residents have to adhere to this process. If they fail to adhere to these standards they are in breach of the NCHC and Scottish Care and [council group] Cosla administer this robustly.
“It is agreed national practice in Scotland for a care home to charge for three days after death which allows families to remove the belongings of the deceased and for the provider to prepare and make the room available for a new resident.
“Scottish Care does not condone any breach of their guidance and we note that where this had occurred it is evidently on the grounds of poor communication, data transfer and financial management rather than deliberate fraudulent activity.”
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