A growing group of fraudsters is women whose husbands have died as a result of injury - and who wrongly continue to receive payments when they enter into new relationships.
Last month, Georgina Hiromena Timoti, 52, was convicted of defrauding ACC of $109,653 and was sentenced to 10 months' home detention and 150 hours' community work.
The Whakatane woman claimed benefits after her husband died in an accident in 1981.
She entered into a de facto relationship in 1985 but continued to tell ACC she was single and received payments she was not entitled to.
Ms Timoti was also ordered to pay $30,000 in reparation.
ACC's general manager of claims management, Denise Cosgrove, said there were "creative people out there" when it came to trying to rip the system off.
The recent cases of widows being caught receiving payments were some of the "unusual" examples staff had encountered.
"The other ones I've seen recently are around the partners who are really engineering the whole thing and not the injured person, so they're quite interesting as well," she said.
Those instances were balanced against the bulk of cases which primarily were people claiming payments when they were not really injured or continued to work.
Ms Cosgrove said the money lost through fraud was eye-watering.
"The simple thing is we have a zero tolerance towards fraud and that's whether it's coming from claimants, providers, levy payers or staff.
"I guess the big point is that ripping off ACC is actually ripping off all New Zealanders because that impacts on the levies we pay."
She said instead the agency's concern should be on injured people who genuinely need their help, and if wrongdoing wasn't detected it would impact on the levies paid "so it really is a fraud against all New Zealanders".
ACC has a dedicated investigations unit to find fraudsters and as well as using intelligence gained through analysing data, documents and trends they rely on tip-offs from members of the public anonymously ringing in and sending emails.
"They get quite a bit through those avenues," Ms Cosgrove said.
In the year to last October 31 there were five fraud case prosecutions as well as ongoing cases.
Fraudsters
Case 1
Georgina Hiromena Timoti, 52, of Whakatane, was convicted last month of 25 charges under the Crimes Act for offending between 1984 to 2009.
She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 months and one week of home detention, 150 hours of community work and ordered to pay reparation of $30,000.
ACC discovered she had repeatedly misled its staff about her relationship status in order to claim benefit payments intended for the single surviving spouse of a person who died as a result of injury.
Timoti received $109,653 she wasn't entitled to.
Case 2
Karyn Peta June Blake, 47, of Blockhouse Bay, Auckland, was sentenced to six months' home detention last month for defrauding ACC.
She pleaded guilty to 10 charges under the Crimes Act of claiming benefit payments intended for the single surviving spouse of a person who died as a result of injury.
Blake applied for the benefit after her husband died in an accident in 1990.
Although she subsequently twice entered into a marriage-type relationship, she supplied ACC with numerous declarations stating that she was not in such a relationship.
She received in total $39,460.
Interesting in the fact that the 1972 and 1982 act's are quite specific about ERc being paid to widows.
(a) If she or he is under 63 years of age at the date of the remarriage, a lump sum equal to the amount of the earnings related compensation that would be payable to her or him under that section during a period of 2 years at the rate applicable
at the date of the remarriage:
(b) If she or he has attained the age of 63 years but is under the age of 65 years at the date of the remarriage, a lump sum equal to the amount of the earnings related compensation that would be payable to her or him under that section during the period between the date of the remarriage and the date on which she or he will attain the age of 65 years at the rate applicable at the date of the remarriage.
Cf. 1972, No. 43, s. 125
Neither of the woman mentioned remarried.
de-facto relationships were not recognised as a marriage type relationship in law until after the time these women entered a relationship.
have they in fact broken the applicable law? namely the Accident Compensation Act 1982