A 57-YEAR-OLD woman dishonestly claimed benefits for more than three years after failing to reveal that she had a £215,000 nest egg in the bank, a court heard.
When Emma Sutcliffe, of Portway, Upton St Leonards, made her initial claim for Universal Credit she said she had no savings or income - and she repeated that claim a year later.
But the truth was that while she was receiving more than £15,000 in benefits she bought a house with some of her cash and rented it out to receive an income, Gloucester Crown Court was told on Wednesday, May 1.
Sutcliffe pleaded guilty to dishonestly making a false statement to obtain benefits between December 2018 and August 2022.
She was sentenced to a 12 months community order with 100 hours of unpaid work and was told that a Proceeds of Crime Confiscation hearing will take place later this year to determine how much should be confiscated from her.
However, her solicitor Tim Burrows told the court that she may well be able to repay the entire outstanding overpayment of £14,612 before then.
Sentencing her, Recorder David Chidgey said he did not accept a probation report suggesting that her false claim was the result of 'blinkered thinking rather than a planned fraud.'
"I think it was fraudulent from the outset," he told her. "In my judgement 'blinkered thinking' doesn't cover it, given the circumstances of the case."
Prosecutor Harry Dickens said Sutcliffe made a claim to the DWP for Universal Credit on December 10, 2018. She said she had no savings or income and was unable to work.
A year later, in December 2019, she completed a benefit review form saying that her circumstances had not changed.
However, Lloyds Bank later supplied investigators with a Halifax statement showing that she had £215,800 in her account and that the balance had never fallen below £52,000 during the period she received benefits.
It was also discovered that in February 2019 she had purchased a property for £138,000 with money from one of her bank accounts and was thereafter receiving rental payments from that property.
Mr Dickens said Sutcliffe had failed to notify the DWP of her capital, her purchase of a property or her rental income.
She was interviewed by the DWP on July 26 at Gloucester Job Centre Plus and she did not dispute the fact that she had over £200,000 savings at the time of her claim.
Neither did she dispute that her capital remained over the limit for the duration of her claim.
"She said she did not think that she needed to report her savings, income or property because she did not think they were relevant. "
Tim Burrows, defending, said he took issue with the prosecution claim that she was fraudulent from the outset because she was told when she first sought JobSeekers Allowance in 2015 that her capital savings would not be taken into account.
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