Camilla’s cousin jailed for £60k fraud
Manscammedbenefitscashforhigh-stakesgambling
A member of a prominent Stirlingshire family was this week jailed for 21 months for a £60,000 fraud.
At Stirling Sheriff Court, Sheriff Wyllie Robertson said Dru Edmonstone had been responsible for a “significant and sophisticated” scam and rejected claims that a psychiatric condition lay behind his criminal behaviour.
Edmonstone, cousin of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, channelled money he had scammed from the state, Stirling Council, and the Royal Burgh of Kensington and Chelsea into high-stakes spread betting.
He initially denied his actions, but as the weight of the Crown case against him was disclosed he began to display “bizarre, inexplicable, extreme and at times concerning behaviour”.
His lawyer obtained a psychiatric report, but having read it, said that he did not “intend to submit that any condition my client suffers from materially contributed to his conduct in the commission of these charges”.
Edmonstone, 46, lived, until he was remanded in custody last month, in a house on a 6000-acre Duntreath Estate near Blanefield.
He fraudulently used the names of his sister, his ex-wife, a former housekeeper, and an employee of his father, Sir Archibald Edmonstone the 83-year-old 7th baronet of Duntreath, to submit bogus claims for income support, tax credits, carers’ allowance, and disability living allowance.
The former financier also fraudulently claimed thousands of pounds in housing benefit, some of it for renting a mews cottage in London’s ultra-posh Kensingston.
Jailing for the fraud, which was committed between January, 2014, and April, 2017, Sheriff Robertson said a report by a psychiatrist revealed “a long history of deception and fraud” including altering GPs’ prescriptions and fabricating evidence to a psychiatrist.
He told him: “You behaved deliberately, in a planned way, in a way which required you to maintain very detailed notes about how you had gone about things.
“To sustain a fraudulent scheme over a number of years, involving a number of different people, requires a degree of mental clarity, agility and ability that if you were mentally ill you might find it difficult to maintain.”
Sheriff Robertson said that Edmonstone, had “a long history of manipulative behaviour and sociopathic behaviour, rather than mental illness”. He said: “The psychiatrist goes on to observe, ‘it appears that his family has been colluding in trying to attract a diagnosis of mental illness as a way of excusing the patient from responsibility for his own behaviour’.
“Custody is the only appropriate disposal.”
Edmonstone, tie-less in a smart suit and powder-blue shirt in the dock, shook visibly as sentence was pronounced, and nodded to a solitary, middle-aged, woman on the public benches – apparently his only supporter in court – before being led down to the cells.
Edmonstone was appearing for sentence after pleading guilty in January.
His solicitor, John Mulholland, said that admission had saved a trial that would have consumed “weeks of court time” and required witnesses to travel from various parts of the UK.
You have behaved deliberately and in a planned way which required detailed notes