Jailed, Sticky Fingers musician who made fake sickness claims
A MUSICIAN who fiddled £35,000 in sickness insurance claims has been jailed after he was caught playing in a band called Sticky Fingers.
Steve Shaw, 55, claimed he was so depressed he could not face leaving home.
But investigators found that Shaw was playing keyboards for the band at a club.
Inquiries also revealed he had been working as a DJ while making bogus claims for three years, a court was told.
Shaw, 55, of Cwmbran, South Wales, admitted fraud and was jailed for 18 months.
Judge Martin Fitton, QC, said the fraudster had shown no remorse for the “consistently deliberate” scam.
Shaw had worked for the UK arm of a multinational roofing and insulation company and was part of a group income insurance protection policy.
In 2001, he made a genuine insurance claim after he was diagnosed with depression and anxiety, Newport Crown Court heard. He lost his job five years later but continued to receive payments from insurance firm Unum.
Investigators discovered that he made bogus claims between January 2013 and January 2016.
He was shadowed by a surveillance team who watched him performing for Fingers in Cardiff in last year.
The investigators also said that he had been working as “DJ Stevie Shaw” at a club in Cardiff for seven years.
Jason Howells, prosecuting, said: “Surveillance, including video, confirmed Shaw was seen active, out and about, and shopping.”
In a report to the judge, Probation Service workers said that Shaw had shown no remorse for his crime.
But John Stokes, in mitigation, said that Shaw was “fully remorseful”.
He told Judge Fitton: “There has been a crumbling of mental health over a number of decades.”
Shaw is set to lose his home in order to pay back the money and will be “genuinely at risk” in jail, said Mr Stokes.
Judge Fitton accepted that Shaw’s initial claim in 2001 was genuine.
But the fraudster was not as ill as he claimed from late 2012 , the court was told. Sticky March