Prison let-off for £27,000 benefit cheat who’d won £250,000 in her divorce
A DIVORCEE who scammed £27,000 in benefits despite receiving a £250,000 settlement from her former husband has been spared jail.
Wealthy Assa Brown, 50, claimed benefits for four years although she was also getting £1,000 a month in rent from a property she had bought in London.
The law graduate swindled £21,731 in housing benefit, £2,233 in council tax benefit and £3,114 in jobseeker’s allowance – totalling £27,078 between 2010 and 2014.
Brown, of Warwick, was handed a four-month suspended jail sentence after admitting fraud.
She was also given a 12-month supervision order and told to do 200 hours unpaid work.
Judge Andrew Lockhart told Warwick crown court she had suffered “a spectacular fall from grace”.
He told her: “You chose to claim benefits across a period of four years when you were in receipt of a quarterof-a-million pounds and £250 a week from the flat. You behaved properly in society until 2010 but then for four years you were fraudulent.
“You knew that others who did not own their own home and did not have a house to rent did not receive the benefit they were entitled to because the benefit system was pushed into difficulty by people like you.
Shame
“You were a wealthy woman in every sense across the course of those years and you chose to enhance that wealth.
“Dishonesty of this length and of this gravity is a serious matter.”
He added: “It is plain to me that under the auspices of the divorce arrangement you were to receive a very large amount of money.”
The court heard that jobless Brown has so far repaid £4,640 and is having £3.70 stopped every week out of the benefits that she is still allowed to claim.
Judge Lockhart added: “I’d have been more impressed if she had repaid it all. She is a woman who is no doubt still sitting on enormous assets.
“She still owns her address and could have taken drawdown on that.”
Amiee Parkes, defending, said: “Her mother and father still live in Iran. She has brought shame on them.
“What triggered this is an acrimonious divorce from her partner. When she first made this claim it wasn’t fraudulent and she was advised to make it by the domestic violence unit.
“She didn’t know she was going to get the sum of money she did but accepts she did not declare that or the property... bought from the proceeds of the divorce.
“She wants to move on with her life and wants to get a job.”
Brown moved to Britain from Iran in 1982 and was general manager of 12 shops until 2010.