EU rules allow migrant workers to claim benefit for children who are in a different country, after working and paying taxes here for a year.
But they cannot legally do so in two countries at once
wo years ago in 2007 it was found that some Polish workers in Britain were illegally claiming child benefit in both the UK and their home country

The UK government estimates that it loses approximately £2bn to benefit fraud every year - and the Polish child benefit claims would be just a very small part of that total.

I'm afraid AR that most of that fraud is 'home grown'

For example
Richard Mulhall, the BNP's council group leader in Calderdale, was sentenced to do 200 hours of unpaid work on four counts of benefit fraud
He was also ordered to pay £2,000 costs and to repay £603.18 in jobseekers' allowance.
He had already repaid the housing benefit and council tax benefit. A jury had found him guilty in October of falsely claiming a total of £3,002.95 in benefits by concealing the fact that his partner was working.

Eastern European migrant workers have limited access on arrival to the welfare state, other than to child benefit which is a universal payment.

Of the 600,000 workers who had registered in the UK in between 2005 and 2007, some 16,868 had applied for some form of income support but the vast majority were turned down.

HM Revenue and Customs, which is in charge of recovering the money, said in a statement: "HMRC takes all allegations of fraud extremely seriously and is looking carefully at the controls in place to ensure all claims are legitimate.
"The UK is working very closely with all its European partners, including Poland, to meet our obligations under EU rules and prevent fraud. We have robust procedures in place."


So what's the reality ?

'Forklift truck driver Peter Rapacz, 36, works for a fruit packing firm in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, while his family remains in Poland.
He lives in a £150-a-week rented house, which he shares with four lodgers.

He sends home half his weekly after-tax wage of £240. In addition, the family receives £33 in child benefit for their two children which is also paid into an account in their home town of Olsztyn, in the north of the country.

How much tax is he paying or putting money into the UK economy to receive this princely weekly sum of £33?

Strangely enough this information was buried at the bottom of a Daily Mail 'shock horror' report in 2007