Updated February 13, 2025 — 12.54pmfirst published at 10.05am
, register or subscribe to save articles for later.
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.
Listen to this article
4 min
Detectives have arrested seven people over an alleged billion-dollar scam in which a crime syndicate coached former young offenders, inmates and school students to file false sex abuse claims with the NSW government.
A third of the population of one NSW prison has submitted claims, and multiple law firms are now under investigation for their roles in thousands of “strikingly similar” complaints.
NSW Police, on Thursday, alleged they had caught “claims farmers” behind about $1.3 billion worth of claims against the NSW Justice and Education departments, many of which were fake.
Heavily armed police from the anti-gang squad Raptor, along with detectives, executed warrants across Sydney and the Gold Coast, rounding up four men and three women.
Among them was 55-year-old Fotis Antonios from Girraween in Sydney’s west, who police allege was a chief of the syndicate.
“He’s made hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not a million dollars; he is the [alleged] syndicate head,” Detective Superintendent Gordon Arbinja told media on Thursday.
Police allege that Antonios and others were instructing complainants to pursue their claims against the NSW government departments under the National Redress Scheme, the police Sexual Assault Reporting...
On February 26, 2025, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued a significant False Claims Act (FCA) ruling in United States of America ex rel. Cheryl Taylor v. Healthcare ...