“I’m just handicapped on paper because I arranged with a doctor…I manipulated him.” In a video widely relayed on social networks, YouTuber Mertel explains how to combine the Allowance for Disabled Adults (AAH), the Specific Solidarity Allowance (ASS) and Personalized Housing Assistance (APL), to the tune of 1,800 euros net per month, although it is absolutely not within the target. A small jackpot received “without giving a damn, without working,” this man boasts.
“I am in very good health, I have my legs, I walk, I have my eyes, I see, I breathe (…). but I claimed an invisible disability to the Departmental House for Disabled People,” the YouTuber continues. By making fun of the “stupid employees who get up in the morning to go to work (…) to pay benefits”, Mertel offers… training for 300 euros to learn how to better defraud the AAH.
A video that has become so viral that it has reached the top of the state, forcing the Minister of Solidarity and Families Aurore Bergé to “carry out a CNAF check and (to) contact the MDPH”. “A video of an individual claiming to be defrauding social assistance has been circulating on social networks since last night. My answer is clear: 0 impunity with fraudsters,” thundered the former president of the Renaissance deputies. Faced with the controversy, Mertel has since deleted her account. According to Cnav estimates at the beginning of June, fraud in benefits paid by family allowance funds reached 351.4 million euros in 2022. A “record amount”.