From The Metro:
A disgraced golf club captain who dishonestly claimed nearly £41,000 in disability benefits avoided jail yesterday.
Valerie Lewis claimed she couldn't walk More than 140m. But covert surveillance footage taken by fraud investigators at Hall Golf Club in Cheshire captured the 55-year old teeing off and pulling her gold golf bag with no difficulty. Her deception began in March 2001 when she made her first claim.
Lewis, who pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 24 weeks in jail, suspended for two years, because she needs to care for her sick husband.
Wednesday 12 January 2011
Oh the irony
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14 comments:
Email a copy of this to her membership secretary. If she fiddles her expenses you can bet she fiddles her round scores too. Perhaps the gormless magistrate(?) who handed down this pathetic sentence should go inside in her place to learn a thing or two about the real world. Now crooked MPs have a magnificent precedent. Thank God I emigrated 10 years ago from your benighted country.
are you really telling me the middle classes work these scams as well as the hoi poloi ?
surely all those teachers who take early retirement on the grounds of disability are genuinely disabled, & never work again ...
Presumably she gets to keep the £41,000, too.
I've always said that invalidity benefits payments(and possibly all benefits) should be made publicly available. Cases such as this would be caught far quicker (and be less likely to be committed in the first place) if people knew what other people were receiving and for what illnesses/restrictions on their mobility.
I see no privacy issue - if you are asking the other members of society to support you for free, why should those doing the paying not be able to see how much you're getting and what its for?
TE, surely they'll have twigged by now?
ND, it's amazing, isn't it?
B, probably.
S, good idea. There's no need to list people claiming Citizen's Income as everybody would get it, but if you want extras like disability (or LVT discounts), then it's only fair to publish names of people (or addresses).
@ND........ and all those policemen retiring on ill-health and disability, too.
Incidentally: was "teeing off and pulling her gold bag" a Freudian slip relating to its contents, or a reference to its colour? :-)
So should benefit fraud investigators have these 'snooping' powers then?
Quick straw poll?
S_L, if Sobers's suggestion was implemented, they wouldn't need them.
History has shown, time and again, that the only real deterrent to crime is the high likelihood of getting caught.
Would that be a five irony?
FT well spotted.
SL, what 'snooping' powers? It's a question of fact and degree. See also what S and B say.
Anon, possibly, I wasn't there at the time.
Yes and the money will be such a comfort to hubby too.
And a poor student fee protestor gets 2+ years for throwing a fire extinguisher.
Oh justice where are you?
They would need a RIPA authorisation signed off to observe/film her play golf.
RIPA would define the investigator as a 'covert human intelligence source'.
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