Police have raided a home in Sydney linked to a Middle Eastern man accused of stealing $3.5 million from the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Investigators with the government’s Fraud Fusion Taskforce (FFT) searched a home and vehicle in Chipping Norton on Wednesday as part of an investigation into Billal Chami, 31, the director of a NDIS provider business.
The FFT said in a statement on Thursday they seized electronic devices for examination and spoke with the occupant of the address, who was released pending further inquiries.
Chami was arrested at his unit in Villawood in December last year after the FFT allegedly detected “anomalies” in his finances, and charged him with “dealing with money reasonably suspected of being proceeds of an indictable crime to the value of $1,000,000.00 or more”.
Police allege Chami was involved in laundering $3.5 million in cash defrauded from the NDIS, and is accused of withdrawing cash from various bank accounts and different banks between 2022 and 2025 to aid himself and others in the laundering of suspected proceeds of crime.
The money was allegedly derived from fraudulent claims submitted to the NDIS, including in circumstances where supports and services were not provided to participants.
Chami who has not entered a plea, was granted bail with conditions including not contacting 26 NDIS participants and multiple plan management companies, living at home with his mother and two sisters, and not using encrypted apps on his phone.
The raid comes amid growing public anger at NDIS fraud and waste, with the scheme now costing taxpayers $50 billion a year, more than Medicare, while criminal syndicates are believed to be stealing at least $8 billion from the scheme, although the FFT admits the true scale of fraud could be much higher.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson said on the weekend she would demand a Senate inquiry into the scheme, following a video by independent journalists Drew Pavlou and Pete Zogoulas examining alleged NDIS fraud carried out by dodgy immigrant providers in Sydney’s west.
The pair allegedly exposed banned NDIS businesses continuing to operate under new names, links to money laundering from Iraq and the illegal tobacco trade, and providers overcharging for services.
Header image: Left, Billal Chami (7News). Right, the FFT raid (AFP).
