The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Aristocrat jailed for £60,000 series of benefit frauds
Offender tried to blame psychiatric condition
A cousin of the Duchess of Cornwall who committed a “significant and sophisticated” series of benefit frauds, then, helped by his aristocratic family, tried to hide behind a smokescreen of mental illness, was jailed yesterday after a sheriff brushed away suggestions that any psychiatric condition might be behind his crimes.
Dru Edmonstone, 46, whose greatgrandmother Alice Keppel, Edward VII’s mistress, is also Camilla’s greatgrandmother, scammed the state, Stirling Council, and the Royal Burgh of Kensington and Chelsea out of thousands of pounds over a period of more than three years.
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 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, of Blanefield, Stirlingshire, lived in a house on a 6,000-acre grouse-shooting estate which his family were gifted by King Robert III in 1435.
He fraudulently used the names of his own 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 for renting a mews cottage in Kensingston, London.
Between January 2014 and April 2017 he pocketed £60,000, channelling the money into high-risk spread-betting.
Jailing him for 21 months, Sheriff Wyllie 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.