Benefit fraud arisocrat told to expect jail
‘Sophisticated’scam funded gambling addiction of Duchess of Cornwall’s cousin
A Stirlingshire aristocrat carried out a “significant and sophisticated”series of benefit frauds to fund a gambling habit.
At Stirling Sheriff Court on Wednesday, Dru Edmonstone, cousin of the Duchess of Cornwall, was remanded in custody and warned he faces a certain jail term .
He admitted a series of benefit frauds in which he scammed the state, Stirling Council and the Royal Burgh of Kensington and Chelsea.
The 46-year-old submitted bogus claims for income support, tax credits, carers’ allowance and disability living allowance.
He obtained the money by using the names of his sister Elyssa, his ex-wife Marie-Laurence, a former housekeeper, and an employee of his father, Sir Archibald Edmonstone, the 83-year-old 7th baronet of Duntreath
Edmonstone, who lives in a house on the 6000-acre estate at Blanefield also fraudulently obtained thousands of pounds in housing benefit, some for renting a mews cottage in Kensingston.
The court was told that between January 2014 and April 2017 he pocketed £60,000 in bogus benefits, channeling the money into high-risk spreadbetting.
Kyrsten Buist, prosecuting, said the scam came to light when Elyssa Edmonstone, who has lived abroad since 2010, made “a general inquiry about making additional payments to her UK national insurance account”.
She found the address the Department of Work and Pensions had for her was not one that she had ever lived at but was in fact her brother’s home.
Miss Buist said: “She confronted him in the presence of their mother and he admitted he had made the claims using his sister’s name and her NI number.
“He signed a declaration admitting he had made the claims without her knowledge or consent and the admissions were recorded by his sister.”
DWP investigators found he had even made phone calls to them pretending to be Elyssa.
Miss Buist, the depute fiscal, said Edmonstone had “made false claims for a variety of benefits using his name and the names of others he is linked to”.
In one scam, he claimed tax credit and disability living allowance by pretending that he was looking after a 12-yearold child with disabling mental health difficulties, including autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and depression, who was neither living with him nor, in fact, was disabled in any way.
He produced a bogus letter in support of the DLA claim from the GP practice in Balfron saying the accused was “fully responsible” for the child.
The letter was signed with a copy of the signature of local GP, Dr Sarah Boddington, apparently scanned from a letter the doctor had actually written for Edmonstone, which had in fact said she could neither confirm nor refute that the child lived with Edmonstone.
Miss Buist said that in January 2014 a telephone call was made to HMRC, purporting to be from Edmonstone’s ex-wife Marie-Laurence Edmonstone, in respect of whom Edmonstone had falsely claimed tax credits and housing benefit.
A female caller claiming to be Marie-Laurence answered security questions before handing the phone to Edmonstone.
Miss Buist said: “The female caller has a Scottish accent, while his wife, in fact, is French.”
She added: “This fraud is not a case of failing to tell the council of a change of circumstances — the accused has made false declarations and has produced what is suspected to be false emails to support that claim.”
The prosecutor, Miss Buist, said examination of Edmonstone’s bank account showed many falsely-claimed payments coming in – and also showed “large payments going out to a spread-betting company”.
Between 2014 and 2017, he pocketed £60k of benefits and channelled it into spread betting