Sick Leave Fraud in Saxony

Time and again, one reads sometimes alarming figures regarding employees’ willingness to engage in so-called “sick leave abuse”. For example, according to a survey by Keyfacts Onlineforschung GmbH, 2.1 million employees (6.5 per cent of the workforce) planned to feign a cold in the winter of 2015 in order to unlawfully obtain paid days off. The emphasis here is on the verb “planned”, which clearly describes the intent to commit fraud. Forty per cent of Germans admit to knowing employees who have called in sick at least once without justification or who do so on a regular basis. The fact that this type of fraud is discussed so openly illustrates the lack of awareness of wrongdoing across large sections of the population – a circumstance that also frequently becomes apparent during observations carried out by our detective agency in Dresden. Seventy-one per cent of employees state that they are not required to submit a medical certificate for just one day of absence, which definitively increases the tendency to stay away from work without health-related reasons. It is striking that men and younger workers in particular state that they know people who (regularly) abuse sick leave, whereas this is less often the case among women and older employees. However, abusing sick leave is no longer a rare exception and certainly no trivial offence, even if the damage caused by an individual case may still seem limited. Calculated across the entire population and economy, however, annual losses amount to several billion euros, hampering Germany’s economic performance and ultimately manifesting themselves in rising prices and tax increases, which are borne by society as a whole.

If sick leave is not abused for personal reasons (family celebrations, competitions, etc.) or out of simple reluctance to work, medical certificates with dubious backgrounds tend to accumulate particularly before long weekends, public holidays and festive periods such as Carnival, during festival season, at major sporting events, before concerts by international stars and ahead of large city festivals. Given that, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, two thirds of so-called “Blaumacher” (German idiom meaning sick leave abusers) are men, one further major event is especially coming into focus for our corporate investigators in Dresden: the football European Championship, which at the time of writing this article is about to begin.

UEFA Euro 2016 as a Key Factor for Sick Leave Fraudsters

In view of the steadily rising number of medical certificates issued in recent years and the scale of the economic damage incurred, our Dresden detectives predict that, with the start of the European Football Championship in France, an even greater increase – and a conspicuous clustering – of sick notes is to be expected this year. As was already the case during the 2014 World Cup, Kurtz Detective Agency will certainly once again be handling several cases of sick leave abuse, all the more so should the German national team qualify for the semi-finals or even the final. While very few employers will call in sick because they personally have tickets and are travelling to France, the majority of German employees are likely to follow the individual Germany matches closely and enthusiastically. As a result, it can be predicted with near certainty that many businesses will receive medical certificates either on the days following evening Germany matches or at the time of afternoon kick-offs. During the 2014 Football World Cup in Brazil alone, 1.4 million feigned sick notes were expected, according to a survey conducted by the travel portal ab-in-den-urlaub.de on work ethic during the tournament. Respondents stated that, due to the late kick-off times caused by the time difference, they intended to call in sick for up to two days without taking holiday leave. The resulting damage ran into the hundreds of millions of euros: the travel portal calculated losses of approximately 446 million euros. Our corporate investigators likewise conducted observations in several cases of so-called “football sickness” during the summer of 2014.

Even though the issue of time differences does not apply to this year’s European Championship, the clearly evident criminal energy (see statistics in the first paragraph) and the fixation on personal interests are sufficient grounds to expect that hung-over and malingering employees will cause significant losses in many companies and businesses across a wide range of economic sectors, and that Germany will not be able to utilise the full potential of its economic growth. Even those employees who do not take an entire day off sick, but instead turn up several hours late after a late-night match and still leave work punctually at 5 p.m. in order to have time before the next game, are harming their employers. Our private detectives in Dresden support employers in exposing these disloyal employees by obtaining evidence admissible in court through surveillance: +49 351 4188 447-0.

Sick Leave Abusers: Sometimes Foolish, Foolisher, Foolishest

Even if a doctor cannot be deceived about an employee’s actual state of health and issues only a one-day certificate instead of the desired week-long sick note, there are still employees who continually try to outdo one another in audacity. These range from attempted bribery of a GP, to a friendly doctor “turning a blind eye”, to the brazen handwritten forgery of a genuinely issued medical certificate.

The latter case is rather rare, but only a few weeks ago our corporate detective agency in Dresden investigated an especially audacious case involving a serial sick leave abuser who regularly managed to secure at least one long weekend per month by submitting crudely forged medical certificates, which had gone unnoticed by the secretary for a long period of time. What was striking was the employee’s obvious carelessness in producing his sick notes: instead of making a potentially more successful digital alteration using image-editing software, he forged the certificates by scraping out the relevant dates and the issue date with a razor blade, copying the resulting blank sick note several times and filling it in by hand, even drawing the stamp freehand. Apart from the wobbly hand-drawn stamp and the visible scraping marks on the copies, the malingerer failed to notice that the medical practice listed on the certificate had since relocated and was operating under the name of a different doctor. Based on these simple details and a two-day observation of the employee, our Dresden detectives were able to prove that he had not visited a doctor at all, yet had nevertheless submitted a supposedly current medical certificate, which turned out to be a forgery.

Approaches to Dealing with Sick Leave Fraud in Your Own Business

If you or your company are affected by conspicuously frequent, regular or suspected forged medical certificates, do not hesitate to engage our private detective agency in Dresden. As a rule, within just a few days – and in some cases even through a single day of observation – it can be conclusively established whether an employee on sick leave is genuinely ill and behaving in a manner conducive to recovery, or whether they are unlawfully enjoying leisure time at their employer’s expense. In addition, our forgery experts are able to examine submitted and suspicious-looking medical certificates and, through further research, determine whether they were in fact issued by the (allegedly) treating doctor, or whether there may be friendly or family relationships between doctor and patient that could suggest a false certificate.

If you suspect one or more employees of unjustified sick leave – for example because they regularly return after an “illness” in high spirits or even with a light tan reminiscent of a short holiday – you can have this discreetly investigated with the assistance of our IHK-certified corporate and private detectives in order to prevent further damage to your business: kontakt@kurtz-detektei-dresden.de.