UK’S biggest benefit cheat is jailed after stealing £1m from taxpayers
A GRANDMOTHER who defrauded the state out of more than £1 million over 15 years, making her the UK’S single biggest welfare cheat, has been jailed.
Christina Pomfrey, 65, exaggerated her multiple sclerosis, falsely claimed she was blind and used the names of unwitting relatives including her sister to pocket Disability Living Allowance, Carer’s Allowance plus a string of other benefits.
She also made benefit claims using a house she no longer lived in and claimed disability benefits in the name of her ex-husband’s first wife who died in a road accident in 1979.
Pomfrey was exposed after investigators observed her driving her car, picking up her grandchildren from school, going for walks and going on shopping trips to the supermarket and to beauty salons. When confronted, she claimed to have given most of the money to charity. However, she admitted she had also purchased numerous holidays, cosmetic treatment and clothes.
Appearing at Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester, Pomfrey was jailed for three years and eight months after admitting 32 charges including fraud, false accounting, possessing criminal property and using articles for fraud. George Ward, senior crown prosecutor of CPS Mersey Cheshire, described the case as “one of the biggest social security and local authority frauds ever to be prosecuted by the CPS”.
Pomfrey’s daughter, Aimee Brown, 34, of Runcorn, was given an 18-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, for money laundering after she admitted banking £88,994 of her mother’s ill-gotten gains. She will have to complete 150 hours’ unpaid work. Sentencing Pomfrey, Judge Sophie Mckone told her: “You cynically exaggerated your disabilities and claimed you used a wheelchair and said you were blind – yet you drove a car and lived as an able-bodied person.
“You even made claims in the name of your husband’s deceased first wife and made applications in the names of others not caring what the impact would be on them. This was a determined benefit fraud on a substantial scale but what is apparent is that there is nothing left of what you took.”
She added: “This is far from a victimless crime. Over 15 years you stole a million pounds from your fellow citizens – money which would have gone to people who justly deserve, money that could have gone to schools and hospitals. Your behaviour is, frankly, staggeringly dishonest.”
Police and DWP investigators raided Pomfrey’s home and found paperwork relating to the fraud in a spare bedroom plus items used to forge documents including blank wage-slips and bank statements that had been doctored.
Pomfrey was arrested in December 2017 and, in an interview, told police: “I’m guilty of everything.
“There has been no involvement for any other person. My husband didn’t know anything about it and I’ve had all the money. That’s it, I’m guilty.”