More benefit thieves

A Barry woman has admitted £24,000 single person fraud.

Angela Lowery from Hartlepool admitted £17,815 single parent fraud. Information from the national benefit fraud hot-line had suggested she was living with her husband, who was working. She was given 24 weeks prison suspended for 12 months with probation supervision and 150 hours community work.

Janice Lee, also from Hartlepool, got away with a sentence of six months in prison suspended for two years, plus 140 hours of unpaid work, after pleading guilty to six offences of fraudulently claiming £38,009 in tax credits. Another single parent fraud.

Jodie Browning, from Batchley, admitted continuing to claim housing benefit and council tax benefit totalling £12,797 by failing to declare that she had started work and allowing her husband to claim incapacity benefit incorrectly by hiding the fact that she was working from him. How did she manage that?

Mubbashir Alam, from Deeplish, provided the council with a faked letter purporting to be from a solicitors’ firm in an attempt to help his partner obtain housing benefit payments for a fictitious tenancy. He was sentenced to carry out 120 hours of unpaid work and ordered to repay full costs of £506 to the council.