‘Illiterate’ mum spared prison over £60,000 benefits fraud
COURT HEARD SHE HAD TO RELY ON FRIENDS TO HELP HER FILL IN FORMS – BUT SHE THANKED PALS ON FACEBOOK AFTER SENTENCING
A MUM who was spared jail for benefit fraud charges after claiming she was ‘effectively illiterate’ thanked supporters in Facebook posts minutes later.
Susan Williams, 47, cheated £60,000 in benefit over-payments.
At her Manchester Crown Court sentencing hearing she claimed she had relied on friends to fill in forms for her. However, shortly afterwards a number of Facebook posts appeared online in Williams’ name.
One read: ‘Escape jail today. Nearly got me self 18 months **** that, no more stupid s*** for me.’
The court heard that for six years Williams, from Moston, hid her job from the Department of Work and Pensions – and even submitted a fake national insurance number to her employers to mask her dishonesty.
As well as failing to disclose her job while claiming income support, Williams claimed carer’s allowance for looking after her father – long after he had moved into a home.
Williams now faces civil action for the £60,000 she was overpaid. The grandmother, who admitted charges of failing to declare a change in circumstances, has 13 previous convictions for dishonesty offences.
Alistair Reid, defending, said she had provided more care to her father than had been accounted for, and had ‘problems in her life,’ including the prospect of eviction.
He said: “She has educational difficulties having left school at a very young age. She is effectively illiterate and the forms that had to be filled in were often done so by friends or family members. With regards to the false national insurance number, if that matter had gone to trial then it would have been the defence’s position that due to her difficulties with education there could have been a genuine error and it was not intentional.”
Sentencing judge, Recorder Robert Atherton, said: “I don’t accept for a minute that you didn’t know what you were doing. You knew what you were entitled to and what you were not when your circumstances changed.”
However, ordering her to serve 52 weeks in jail suspended for two years, with 250 hours of unpaid work and a 12-month supervision order, the judge said Williams had shown ‘some remorse’ and should give back to the community she had stolen from.