Understanding benefit fraud in Germany

I have started browsing this forum as it looks likely my husband will be posted to Germany with his company in the near furture. As a former expat in Munich - I am very excited about this. However thought this might be the place to gain a little insight into a problem we have acquired in the last couple of months. We hired an au-pair from Berlin earlier this year. She immediately began to ask us to sign some forms that would allow her to continue with child benefit among other things. The problem was was that we would have to state that she was at college for 16 hours a week when she was actually only there for four. We refused as benefit fraud is a pretty big deal here. She was very unhappy with this, and continued to pester us for weeks. Finally we found out she had asked our neighbour, a family friend and my cousin to sign for her. My 18 year old cousin foolishly agreed to do this for her without our knowledge. Needless to say when we found out, we asked her to leave. My question is, how much of a problem does this pose for my cousin, what should we do about it if anything at all, and is it taken seriously in Germany or does everyone do this, as she claims. (Incidentally we have had most of our other aupairs from Germany who have never been anything but professional, honest, charming girls - this was a one off for us.) Thank you for any insight you can offer me.

I'd say don't do anything at all. If you had lied on the forms, that would have been wrong. You didn't. Exactly how much trouble you might have been in if caught is beside the point. You were right to keep your nose clean with the German government, especially since you might be moving to Germany.

Let your cousin find her own way out of the mess if she gets called on it. She didn't sign your name, did she?

Thanks Cinzia - the truth is I can't remember the information the form was looking for. I glanced at one very briefly and there were several. I know that my cousin believes she posed as a tutor or college teacher. She would not have been able to understand the form so had no idea what she was signing. I know we should leave her to sort out the mess but I feel bad for her as I feel there was an element of manipulation here and my cousin can be quite young etc. She didn't know we had many many conversations with au-pair beforehand re this. She (cousin) is very upset obviously. I'm happy to let lie...as long as it does not come back to bite us (as ex employers etc).

I suppose you might want to bring the matter to the attention of the au pair agency that the young woman came from. I don't have much experience with au pairs, so I don't know how involved an agency gets in the contract process besides just acting as a liason to connect au pairs and families, but they might want to know about the incident.

Other than that, what can you do, really? If your cousin gets into trouble (seems unlikely to me), she can always try pleading ignorance. In my experience with other offices of the German government, this might not get her far, but what other excuse does she have? I don't think you want to report the au pair to the German government yourselves.

Are you seriously worrying about your cousin, who falsely signed a form in the UK about a German matter, for someone who hasn't even been caught, and has probably a 1 in 100,000 chance of actually being so? That's crazy.

My guess is that this is only a point of concern for you because you're considering turning the nanny in, and don't want your cousin to get caught in it as well. Just let it go. If you just leave it alone, probably nothing will ever come of it. If it does, then really it's not your problem when it comes right down to it, so stop worrying about it. Let your cousin's parents worry about it, if anyone.

Anyone who willingly signs unknown documents in a foreign language deserves to panic a little about the potential consequences of her actions, otherwise she'll never learn her lesson.

And even if the matter came to the attention of the "authorities" (notorious for their general lack of coordination), the only person who would have anything to answer for is the au-pair. There is no "Register for Foreign Persons In A Foreign Country Who May Have Knowingly Signed Something They Shouldn't Have For A German Citizen". On the offchance the German Minor Benefits Misdemeanour SWAT Team comes bursting in through your upstairs windows at 2am, you can always claim you believed her when she assured you she was doing 16 hours of schooling.

Err - have to say it did cross our minds to report it. We were pretty furious. (understandably). However as one of you have pointed out - do not want to implicate cousin and also just let sleeping dogs lie. Don't want to get embroiled in any more nonsense. My original question was is this a big deal in Germany? It appears it is not and nothing will come of it. Thank you for the information. I appreciate it.

I think KoffinBerlin is right. From what I understand, you/your cousin signed a form saying that she works so many hours a week at your place. What she does the rest of the time and where her other money comes from is not your business. If she lies to the authorities that's her business, and you don't have to find out how many hours she is studying etc. becasue she isn't reporting to you for anything and you aren't the state. I can't imagine why she would even tell you anything about what she does esp anything potentially illegal. Odd.