£20k-£40k benefit fraud

Dole cheat mum Faye Wilson, who plundered more than £40,000 she wasn’t entitled to, has walked free from court.

Wilson, 36, from Derry Hill, Calne, claimed income support, housing benefit and council tax benefit despite being married to a man who was working.

But after hearing she has two young children and may have been entitled to some tax credits if she had told the truth, a judge imposed a suspended sentence.

Oliver Willmott, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court how the claim for benefits was genuine when it started in 1998.

But five years later she married Anthony Mensah in Ghana and he entered the country on a spouse’s visa which stated the couple were married.

During the following five years he had a number of jobs working first as a security and then at Honda in Swindon.

Mr Willmott said investigators looked at the case in 2005, before the visa conditions were discovered, where the couple said they were not living together as man and wife.

But he said circumstantial evidence including accounts with Sky TV, eBay and insurance companies showed they were together.

During the five year period from 2003 to 2008 she claimed £41,217.19p which she was not entitled to.

Wilson pleaded guilty to two counts of benefit fraud.

Alan Fuller, defending, said had his client gone about things the right way the couple would have been entitle to tax credits which could have totalled more than half the sum she received.

Wilson was a single mum when she met Mensah over the internet, he said, and he was living in London and working as a security guard.

He returned to Ghana and tried to come back on a student visa, which was refused and she wanted to continue the relationship so they married.

On their return to the UK he lived in London and she in Calne continuing their long distance relationship.

He was returning to see her in Wiltshire and helping her as he could but not living with her as man and wife.

Mr Fuller said she had suffered depression and had an 11-year-old son with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and a four year old daughter with Mr Mensah.

Passing sentence Judge Euan Ambrose said “In the guidelines £40,000 benefit would attract a sentence of about 16 weeks on a guilty plea.

“That is before I take into account of tax credits which you didn’t claim. If you had claimed them it could be approaching that £40,000 figure.

“It would be wrong for this to be reported as a £40,000 fraud. The net benefit is something between the two, somewhere in the middle. I don’t know and I can’t say with certainty what it was.”

He imposed a 12 week jail term suspended for 18 months and told her to do 240 hours of community service and pay £300 costs.

After passing sentence he said “You know that this is a last chance: breach this order and prison it is.”