Benefit fraudster jailed for ‘significant sophisticated’ crimes

A cousin of the Duchess of Cornwall who committed a “significant and sophisticated” series of benefit frauds has been jailed after a sheriff dismissed suggestions that any psychiatric condition might be behind his crimes.

Dru Edmonstone, whose great-grandmother Alice Keppel, Edward VII’S mistress, is also Camilla’s great-grandmother, 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, 46, lived, until he was remanded in custody last month, in a house on a 6,000-acre grouse-shooting estate that his family were gifted by King Robert III in 1435.

He fraudulently used the names of his own sister, his exwife, a former housekeeper, and an employee of his father, Sir Archibald Edmonstone the 83-year-old seventh baronet of Duntreath, to submitted 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 for renting a mews cottage in Kensingston, London. Between January 2014 and April 2017 he claimed £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.

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 Edmonstone, of Blanefield, Stirlingshire, had “a long history of manipulative behaviour and sociopathic behaviour, rather than mental illness”.