Devious £740k benefits cheat gets six years
A‘ DESPICABLE ’ benefits cheat from Runcorn who pretended to have dementia and that her dead dad was alive for 12 years to claim his war pension has been sent down for nearly six years.
‘Untruthful and devious’ Ethel McGill, 68, of Windmill Hill, appeared at Liverpool Crown Court on Monday having pleaded guilty to 14 counts before trial to false welfare claims and money laundering over the estimated £740,000 she fiddled from the public purse in her decades-long campaign of scamming.
McGill had been due to face sentencing on July 19 in Chester only for the case to be transferred to accommodate her supposed need of a wheelchair. The case was described by the Crown Prosecution Service as one of the biggest of its type in the UK’s history.
Robert Dudley, prosecuting, told Chester Crown Court how her duplicity began nearly 30 years ago as she registered at two separate doctors’ surgeries under different names, presenting at one without any serious health issues and at the other with a myriad of ailments.
When McGill’s father died in 2004, McGill continued to claim his war pension for another 12 years, even persuading someone to lie in his bed to hoodwink assessors from the Independent Living Fund in 2012.
The scam reaped a staggering £590,000 for McGill.
Two years later in 2014 she told Liverpool Housing Trust that her father was in Scotland with his carer.
McGill even fabricated the existence of a carer to make bogus care package claims to Halton Borough Council.
Suspicions continued to mount and the Department For Work And Pensions (DWP) launched a covert surveillance probe in 2016, and discovered that despite McGill’s claims of having ‘ severe care needs’ due to debilitating illnesses including
dementia, she was seen shopping, carrying items such as wooden shelving and armfuls of boxes around as well as lifting, bending, and moving around without help.
When arrested, she appeared ‘ very confused and unable to speak’, and when not lying down in an awkward posture, she walked with one foot turned inwards.
After she left the station, officers watched on CCTV as she began walking with her foot pointing forward and ‘talking animatedly’ with her son.
When DWP investigators searched her home, they found home videos of McGill walking unaided as well as a bizarre acting agency profile promoting herself as ‘actor, film and stage crew’ who can play roles from ‘ a very hardhearted Glasgow woman to being a very timid domestic abuse victim’.
Despite being charged, her rampant duplicity continued.
McGill even failed to attend an early court hearing in Warrington over a supposed stroke, but extensive scans found no sign of a problem and she was discharged with a diagnosis of ‘fictitious illness behaviour’.
Dan Gaskell, defending, said his client had chosen not to take medication that had affected her ability to ‘focus’ at her previous court hearing when the judge had reprimanded her for presenting as incognizant telling her ‘don’t insult my intelligence’.
Mr Gaskell said McGill’s husband had played a role in instigating the claims for her father’s war pension after his death, and added that medication she began taking had affected her mental health adding that the scam was evidence of a mental health problem in itself.
He added that it was a general practitioner who had diagnosed her dementia, not herself.
Judge Steven Everett said the court had to send a message that it was unacceptable to fleece £740,000 from the public purse.
He cited a pre-sentence report from a probation officer who interviewed McGill at assess her prospects for rehabilitation and found her ‘untruthful and devious’ with ‘ no remorse’ and ‘relevant previous convictions’.
The judge branded her ‘pathetic’ for having switched from speaking normally during an interview with a probation officer to pretending to be incoherent when her son entered the room.
In addition, mystery remains as to what happened to the cash as McGill was not observed to be living a lavish lifestyle with her ill-gotten bonanza.
The judge sentenced McGill – who tried to hide her face as she arrived at court on Monday by burying her face against a pile of incontinence pads – to five years and 10 months in prison.
During his summing up, Judge Everett said: “Nobody believes – I don’t – nobody believes that you are ill.
“You have been putting this on now for many years regrettably, and your devious behaviour with very little remorse sadly has finally caught up with you and now you are going to have to learn the punishment.
“You pleaded guilty at a late stage in these proceedings.
“It’s clear to me that you went as far as you possibly could until you realised that there was no way out for you and that’s why you pleaded guilty.”
He added: “You decided to use your father’s death to your financial benefit.
“What a terrible terrible thing to do and it wasn’t even for a short space of time.
“For year after year, you in a sense sadly sullied your father’s name and I note for example he was entitled to a war pension and you sullied his name by making these dishonest, despicably dishonest claims and they were for a substantial amount of money.”
Speaking after Monday’s hearing, a DWP spokeswoman said: “Benefit fraud is a crime that diverts money from those who really need it, in this case through a deliberate and sustained deception.
“In addition to any sentence imposed by the court, people must pay back all the money they falsely obtained.
“We have zero tolerance of anyone fraudulently claiming benefits and will take swift action to investigate, supporting our partners and prosecutors to bring them to justice – as we did in this case.”
The spokeswoman added that McGill’s ruse had evaded the authorities early on because her father had two identities of Robert Dennison and Thomas Dennison and his death had been registered in a different name to his benefits claims.
There were more family aspects to the case also.
At an earlier hearing, McGill’s son Christopher McGill, 28, was handed a two-year community order and 150 hours unpaid work at Chester Crown Court on July 19 over two counts of acquiring criminal property for signing for carer’s allowance on a form that forensic handwriting analysts established was filled in by his mum.
The charges related to claims for £27,000 over eight years, six months.
Hannah Bazley 25, admitted two counts of fraud by false representation in connection with claims for £3,700 in benefits, relating to a Halton Borough Council care package to pay for a nonexistent carer.
A Proceeds Of Crime Act hearing is to take place to determine what happened to the cash. ●