£750k cheat who claimed late dad’s pension is jailed
A ‘DEVIOUS’ amateur actress branded ‘Britain’s worst benefit cheat’ over a £750,000 scam was jailed yesterday.
A judge slammed 68-year-old Ethel McGill for ‘sullying’ the name of her soldier father by hiding his death to continue claiming his war pension.
Judge Steven Everett accused the pensioner of ‘breathtaking dishonesty’ over the scam during which she asked a friend to lie under a blanket and pretend to be her father when inspectors visited.
McGill, who was jailed for nearly six years, topped up the pension by feigning dementia and mobility issues for more than two decades in what is believed to be the largest individual benefit fraud.
She arrived at court in a wheelchair and buried her face in a pack of incontinence pads in an attempt to avoid being photographed.
But the judge told her she was fooling no one – and hit out at the Department of Work and Pensions for failing to stop the fraud sooner.
The mother-of-two used her acting talents to con authorities into believing her father, Robert Dennison, was alive for more than a decade after his death so she could claim his war pension and handouts for round-the-clock care.
But despite raking in almost £600,000 in his name over 12 years, it was still not enough.
She also faked illnesses including arthritis and dementia – and claimed she needed a wheelchair to get around to secure disability living allowance payments and a lucrative care package.
Officials became suspicious when McGill – originally from Glasgow – made repeated excuses about why her father was not at home.
Surveillance teams spotted her shopping, driving, walking and carrying boxes near her bungalow in Runcorn, Cheshire. They also discovered her acting profile on a website, in which she declared she had performed in many roles.
Even when she was arrested in 2016, McGill told police her father was ‘away at the caravan’. In reality the former Second World War infantryman had died, aged 82, in 2004.
Last month she finally admitted 14 counts of fraud and moneylaundering.
At Liverpool Crown Court yesterday her barrister pleaded for a short sentence, saying she lived in ‘straitened circumstances’.
But Judge Everett told her a ‘message’ needed to be sent out that stealing so much money from the public purse would receive a lengthy sentence, jailing her for 70 months.
Judge Everett told her: ‘Part of your problem is that nobody, including me, believes that you are ill, and that you have been putting this on for years. Your devious behaviour, with very little remorse, has caught up with you and now you will have to pay the penalty.’