Benefit frauds roundup

Lamine Konate from Peterborough continued to claim housing benefit, council tax benefit and income support without telling the authorities he had a job. He was ordered to carry out 120 hours of unpaid community work and repay over £4,500 he had falsely claimed, along with £300 costs.

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A WOMAN suffering from a degenerative joint disease has been jailed for six months for failing to declare she was working while claiming more than £50,000 in benefits.

Julie Simpson maintained her claims for incapacity benefit, disability living allowance and housing benefit for almost five years while doing cleaning work.

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John Thompson pretended his wife had left him when she was living under the same roof in Middlesbrough. The former steelworker falsely claimed housing and council tax benefit totalling £15,624 over a period of 10 years.

He bought his council house in 2004, six years after he began stealing from the public purse by claiming he lived alone. Investigators dug up finance arrangements for Sky TV and credit on a new three-piece suite which linked his wife, Kathleen, to the same address in Barrington Crescent.

Thompson was sentenced to a 12-month jail sentence, suspended for two years with two years’ supervision. No order to pay compensation was made.

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