THE Catholic Church's employment arm has been systematically rorting the taxpayer-funded welfare-to-work program, defrauding large sums from the multibillion-dollar scheme.

It is one of a number of employment agencies that are exploiting loopholes in the $4.7 billion Job Services Australia program, a federal initiative to assist the long-term unemployed find work.

As the scheme rewards agencies that ''broker'', or find, a high volume of jobs for Centrelink recipients, some organisations are falsely claiming they have found jobs that individuals secured for themselves.

The greater the number of jobs the agencies find, the higher the fees they receive and the more likely they are to win future government contracts.

But in the case of CatholicCare, as many as 70 per cent of the jobs it has claimed it ''brokered'' were found by the job seekers.