A 48 year old Adelaide woman who worked inside the National Disability Insurance Agency has been charged over an alleged $5 million dishonesty plot against the NDIS, the scheme she was paid to help run.
The Australian Federal Police allege the Blakeview woman accessed more than 40 NDIA participant records without authorisation, during work hours and outside them, and received $53,000 from a local NDIS provider, part of the total alleged $5 million plot. Police also allege fraudulent claims were submitted against her own family members' NDIS plans for supports and services that were never provided.
She's been charged with four offences: disclosing protected agency information without authorisation, abuse of public office, attempting to forge false documents to cause a loss to the Commonwealth, and dishonestly obtaining a financial advantage for another person. The most serious carries up to 10 years in prison.
She's on bail and is due before Adelaide Magistrates Court on 20 August 2026. The charges are allegations, and they're untested in court.
An insider case
The investigation began in March 2026 and was run by the Fraud Fusion Taskforce, the multi agency operation that takes in the AFP, the NDIA, the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission and the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission, with help from South Australia Police and Services Australia. Investigators seized electronic devices from three locations: the woman's Blakeview home, a Mawson Lakes property and a business at Prospect.
Police allege she failed to declare her connection to an NDIA registered business, and a relative's employment there, as a conflict of interest.
"Fraud of Commonwealth programs is an area of key focus for the AFP and its partners," AFP Detective Inspector Aidan Milner said.
NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commissioner Louise Glanville said fraud is "fundamentally incompatible with the principles, purpose, and integrity of the NDIS". The NDIA said "the safety of participants and security of their personal information are absolute priorities".
Video supplied by AFP.
The scale of the problem
The alleged plot is one case in a scheme with a fraud problem now measured in billions. The NDIS costs taxpayers $46.3 billion a year, and estimates of how much leaks to fraud and non compliant claims range from $2 billion to $5.4 billion a year.
- The NDIA received more than 7,000 fraud tip offs in the March 2025 quarter alone.
- The Fraud Fusion Taskforce has 660 investigations underway and has referred 59 people to court.
- There have been 24 convictions for crimes against the NDIS since the taskforce stood up in November 2022.
- More than 2,500 providers with incorrect or non compliant claims, or other risk indicators, have been disrupted, and almost 200 individuals and providers have been banned.
- The government says its integrity interventions will deliver $3.1 billion in benefits between November 2022 and June 2029, including more than $880 million in prevented non compliant payments.
Both sides built this
The fraud story spans both sides of politics. Labor legislated the NDIS in 2013 under Julia Gillard. The Coalition ran the rollout from 2013 to 2022 and stood up the first NDIS Fraud Taskforce in 2018. Labor's Fraud Fusion Taskforce replaced it in November 2022 with more agencies and more money.
What neither side publishes is a single running total of fraud reported, people charged and money recouped since the scheme began in 2013. The taskforce era's own scorecard is the closest thing: 24 convictions, against tip offs running at 7,000 a quarter. Recoveries are reported case by case, like the $575,000 in reparation orders from Operation Pegasus, rather than as a scheme wide figure.
Where the scheme's money ends up has been a One News question before. We previously reported how an NDIS plan management company bought for $26.8 million was sold four years later for more than $400 million, with former Labor ministers chairing super funds that benefited. No regulator has alleged any wrongdoing in that transaction.
The Blakeview woman's matter returns to Adelaide Magistrates Court on 20 August.
