Married woman in single mother con trick

A married woman faked being a single mother to con the benefits agency out of £8,000 to cover debts she had mounted up playing online slot machines.

Tracey Young, 38, spent more than a year pretending to the Department for Work and Pensions that her husband Craig did not exist. She duped the agency into paying her £8,000 in benefits which she blew gambling on internet fruit machines.

Sheriff Lindsay Foulis ordered Young to carry out 153 hours of unpaid work after ruling out a curfew as being counter-productive.

He said: “A Restriction of Liberty Order is sometimes the cop-out sentence in cases such as these but this seems to me to be totally self-defeating.

“According to this report the reason you got into this hole was that you were spending all your available funds on online slot games.

“So it seems to be totally self-defeating to order you to stay indoors for 12 hours each day and have you possibly focus all the time on online betting.

“The bottom line is that unpaid work is the obvious way of dealing with you. If you don’t want to go to custody then get the work done.”

Young, of Bute Drive, Perth, admitted knowingly making a false representation to the DWP on the phone to claim income-related Earning Support Allowance between January 1 2016 and January 3 2017.

She admitted getting money she was not entitled to by saying she was a single mother when she was living with, and being supported financially by, her husband Craig.

Her not guilty plea to a charge of conning the local authority out of £3,367.99 in housing benefits in the same manner was accepted by the Crown.