Is there any actual hard evidence of this? Or is it all anecdotal?

Yet we’re training undercover spies to ferret out benefits fraudsters.

Cool! That’ll save us about 20k a year after we pay wages and administration costs. Then we can do the same for the tax fraudsters and evaders, right?

Yep, according to the article, they have a strong enough lobby bribe machine to win exemption.

Since they increase theft/loss rates. If the increase in losses is greater than the saving in wages, they are a failure.