Teen beauty spot drinkers are ramblers, not rebels
- Dave Burrows
Telford mother falsely claimed £85,000 in benefits
Thursday 16th September 2010, 3:00PM BST.
A Telford mother who falsely claimed almost £85,000 in benefits has been spared an immediate prison sentence.
Sally Masefield, 35, of Farm Lodge Grove, Malinslee, received overpayments totalling £84,130 in income support and housing and council tax benefits over a five year period, Shrewsbury Crown Court heard today.
She admitted four counts of dishonestly failing to notify the authorities of a change in her circumstances.
The mother-of-five failed to tell Telford & Wrekin Council and the Department of Work and Pensions she was living with two different men during the period of the offences.
Bosses at the DWP, which was paying her income support, and the council, from which she received housing and council tax benefit, believed she was living alone in Farm Lodge Grove.
But an investigation uncovered that between 2003 and 2008 she had lived as husband and wife with Alan Cox and later Ian Masefield.
Judge Peter Barrie gave Masefield, who now prefers to go by the name Sally Jones, a six month custodial sentence for the offences but suspended the sentence for two years. He also ordered her to carry out 150 hours of unpaid community work.
He said the DWP would try to get back as much money as it could through deduction to her benefits.
Mr Nicholas Berry, prosecuting, said Masefield did not inform the authorities she was living as man and wife between 2003 and 2008 with Mr Alan Cox.
Mr Berry said Mr Cox was in employment and the couple’s relationship would have affected Masefield’s benefit payments.
The court also heard Masefield had lived with Mr Masefield in 2008 who she later married but she did not inform the authorities of the change in circumstances. The couple are now estranged, the court heard.
Mr Danny Smith, for Masefield, said she had a low IQ and the offences were not complex.
By Iain St John
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I am sure the courts will send out a strong message to the public not to do this, by ensuring she has to pay back £1. That will teach her that crime does not pay no doubt.
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Some simple maths
£84130 over 5 years = £16826 p.a which is worth ~£20,000 before tax ( this equates to £9.60 ph for a 40hr week), nice work if you can get it, I’m sure she’ll be flavour of the day with those of her neighbours who work their backsides off and probably don’t get paid that much.
I shall keep my views to myself as this otherwise it wouldn’t stand a cat in hells of getting past the moderator!
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… that’s actually equivalent to a take home (after stoppages) wage of £16,826 a year !!!!!
How many honest, hard working people in Telford actually achieve that then ????
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Totally agree, it’s disgusting!
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Bearing in mind that the amount quoted is effectively “after tax and NI”, (i.e.cash in hand), and is additional to any other income, then as a basic-rate taxpayer on £22,000 pa, to have had the same financial advantage, I would have had to work a shade under 5 years and have SPENT NOTHING AT ALL to have ended up with that amount in my hand. 40 hours a week, 48 weeks a year. That’s a total of 237 weeks or 9480 hours.
Taking my mortgage, food, bills, travel to work, council tax, INCOME TAX TO PAY FOR THE WELFARE STATE, and all the other inevitable outgoings, the time that I would have to work to allow me to save that sum would be close to 27 years. 40 hours a week, 48 weeks a year. That’s a total of 1296 weeks or 51840 hours.
To have simply raised the £85,000 tax to pay these false claims, the government would have had to tax me for 17 years. So to allow this amount to have been paid to one person over 5 years, the government would have had to take 5 years tax from 3.4 people in my situation and had it to this woman. Nothing to schools, health, or anything else, just 17 years worth of tax to fund this level of false claim.
And the government has simply taken the tax on my handed it over to this person.
The unions may wish to remember this when they start calling for strike action to protest against cuts and that the poorest will be hardest hit.
Cut away, government, I am fully behind you.
I hope that this falsely claimed money will be paid back, but I doubt it. Another slap on the wrist in return for living it up at the expense of the poor taxpayers like me.
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Anyone done the math on this?. Unless I have sadly miscalculated this pans out at over 350 pounds per week and this is only what she was overpaid so how much was she claiming overall?.
I’ll wager there are a lot of people in Shropshire who are working for less than 350 per week take home. I wonder how they feel reading this story, the benefit system has gone mad if this is anything to go by.
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Mr Danny Smith, for Masefield, said she had a low IQ – poor excuse. I f i claim to stupid can i have some benefits too please?
She is a joke!
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It’s typical. This woman decided that instead of working and providing for herself she will be a single mother. Why is it so often a career choice? Teenagers these days rather than look for work, decide to become single mothers. That’s not responsible and I’m fed up paying for everybody elses children. If you want to have kids, only have them when you can afford it.
Child benefit should be paid as 100% for first child, 50% for second, and no extra cash if woman decides to have more children.
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And now that the story is expanded since I last read it, we see that she is STILL receiving benefits! And that repayment of this fraud will come from deductions from those payments.
Apart from the centuries that it would take to make the repayment, if there’s enough to deduct money to pay the fraud without causing “poverty”, then obviously DWP are paying too much benefit in the first place.
Benefits should be about meeting peoples’ basic temporary needs on the road to employment and productivity, not shovelling piles of money at them to pay for the umbrellas in their daytime cocktails.
Low IQ her lawyer says. Hmmm, I’m not so sure about that.
C’mon LibCons, wield that benefits axe now. With large payments like this, I really don’t think that the “poor” will notice a little fat trimmed from their handouts.
And as the “real” poor tend to actually be the hard working taxpayers on average wages who get taxed to fund these lifestyles, maybe we need to create a new “poverty” reference for benefit claimants after all.
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“a six month custodial sentence for the offences but suspended the sentence for two years. He also ordered her to carry out 150 hours of unpaid community work.
He said the DWP would try to get back as much money as it could through deduction to her benefits ”
Wow !! That’s really gonna put anyone else off doing the same eh ?
NOT !!!
Her and the other dossers out there that sponge off us hard working taxpayers need some REAL punishment that will incentivise them to WORK !
Real terms of imprisonment, with suspension of ALL benefits until a suitable work period has been completed, not wishy washy wrist slapping
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So its better not to get married then?
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No, Marco, I’m afraid it’s not.
Under successive weak governments, benefits have created dependency. Labour increased this dependency on the basis that it created a whole under-class of voters who would hold the balance of power in elections. Luckily, the other side of the scales voted them out this time, but it was close, due to the large number of dependency votes created. The problem for LibCons now is to take away peoples’ dependency on hand-outs and do things for themselves.
The current system:
a) Encourages fecklessness because it is more advantageous to live without a partner as the pay-outs are even bigger. If you’re a single Mum, and not coping on current benefits, then the answer is to have another kid as the state pays out more for each one. And make sure Dad(s) is not around because benefits get cut in that case.
b) Doesn’t encourage claimants to even consider work as an option as someone on even a decent wage above minimum will be poorer than a claimant in the same situation because they have to pay tax and NI at a low salary level so work hard and end up with less. They also lose all the special offers, tickets, options, etc. that are open ONLY to benefit claimants. Claimants may complain that they don’t get enough(!), but they have a tendency to forget all the freebies that get thrown at them as well.
Benefits are no longer a temporary means of getting relief and assistance at low points in life, they are a more or less permanent lifestyle option.
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Granted I am as hard working as the rest of society but you have got to give the lady credit for getting away with it for so long. Would everyone here not do the same thing if they knew they could ge away for it for so long? I challenge anyone out there who says they wouldnt cos they are bending the truth.
We all live by the Hunter gatherer mentality and would do anything for our kids so not saying I agree with what she did but another prime example of someone not doing there job and chasing her on this issue.
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No I won’t give this “lady” credit as you suggest. This parasite is a thief pure and simple. And no most people I know wouldn’t do the same if they could get away with it, because most people actually have decency and morality.
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Absolute rubbish Ian; it might be acceptable in your world and that of this criminal, but it is not acceptable to me.
“A prime example of someone not doing their job”? – again: rubbish. Someone was obviously doing their job to catch her. Have you the slightest idea how long this type of criminal activity can take to investigate thoroughly? Obviously not, having worked in this area myself, let me tell you it can take months, even years to resolve and for what? Some out of touch magistrate to pass a sentence such as this, that’s what.
With benefit fraud now costing the country billions each year (and rising), how can you even attempt to give this woman credit?
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I think that is rather small minded as this woman granted may have done something wrong but the use of the word parasite is a little strong and ill mannered. Is the blame solely with this woman?
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Er, yes, in this particular case, the blame is solely with her, Ian, otherwise she would not have been found guilty of falsely claiming £85,000, she would have been cleared.
It’s been to court and the guilty verdict is what places the blame squarely with her. If she takes it to appeal and wins, then I may be prepared to change my opinion.
Dictionary definition of parasite: “One who habitually takes advantage of the generosity of others without making any useful return.”
Sounds about right, so no, not “a little strong and ill-mannered”, but a fact made using the correct English word in the correct context.
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I gather most of you who have wrote comments that do not leave any room for sympathy are in happy relationships? While I do not support any one who has kids soley to claim benefits there is always another side to the story.
I my self found my self a single mum after believing I had found the man of my dreams, unfortunately he had different ideas and after eleven years of marriage left. I did what I thought was the right thing and sought employment imedaitely. I found my self with no one to rely on to help collect and pick up my children and nearly lost them doing the right thing. Now I am on benefits. Every one slates the woman but never the men who dont pay, who dont take a part in looking after the children, who live a bachelor life style when there ex wives are bringing up their children alone with no support. And for the men who walk in to their lives, yes they may work but proabaly offer little in any moeny ways that is why some woman dont come off benefits because they fear being dumped back in the gutter. So think before you slate others because the story is not always as it appears . Because usually its men who walk away and make woman make the choices they do .
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Laura, you are correct and it certainly is true that there are very many feckless men who don’t give full (or any) support to maintain their kids. It’s also true that there was general outcry over the “unfair” chasing of such men by the CPS, a good concept in theory but staffed by many incompetent managers who would come to strange decisions and go after easy targets rather than targeting the hard core non-payers.
It’s certainly not easy being a single WORKING Mum – the way benefits have been set up, together with inflexible and expensive nursery arrangements make life difficult for those who choose to work. That is a problem that the government needs to sort out – change the system around and make it more advantageous to work rather than take the current easy option and sit at home on benefits.
However, I don’t think that anyone is slating this woman for being a woman and claiming benefits; they’re slating her for receiving an EXTRA £85,000 in benefits by making false claims. That’s entirely different to criticising her for claiming the benefits that she’s entitled to, (and which she is still receiving).
The state has determined that the benefits that it pays are enough to meet the circumstances of the claimant – there’s no excuse for pocketing another £85,000 by telling lies.
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Ian, what planet are you on?. Parasite is a very apt description for this woman. Dictionary definition-” A person who habitually relies on or exploits others and gives nothing in return “. Is that simple enough for you?.
Very well said “working mum” at least you can see the reality here.
No doubt she is sitting at home in front of a 42inch flat screen TV with a large drink laughing at all these comments. Maybe some culling is required at the benefits office that processed her claim.
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So how would the staff who processed the claim know it was fraudulent then?
By all means take them to task if they are found to have acted incorrectly, but you don’t seem to realise that it is the responsibility of the person claiming to report their true circumstances at the correct time. If they don’t then it can often take time for the fraud to be found. This may be through the vigilance of the staff who you appear to want culled, through calls to the benefit fraud hotline or via increasingly sophisticated data matching systems which pick up discrepancies in claims.
Ian Wright, that well known “expert” in the field made a similar comment in his tedious five o’clock show on channel 5, stating in his infinite wisdom in relation to a similar case, that “someone was not doing his job”.
To Mr Wright and other armchair experts, please stick to commenting on what you know about.
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Colin you have agreed with my main point that it is not all down to the woman in question as you have stated that some culling is required at the benefits office. As oper every story there are a few sides to this. I agree with Lauras comment where needs must this woman has acted on impulse and done something to try and give her kids a way of life. As stated above in my original comment Colin I did mention that i did not agree with what she had done and pointed this out earlier all i suggested was that someone else could be to blame.
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I beg to differ Ian, no way did I agree with you. The culling I referred to was to remove whoever decided this person should receive such an obscene amount of benefit. Let’s be realistic here, if she was overpaid by 350 pounds per week her original benefit payment must have been horrendous. When I signed on sick I was paid about 47 pounds per week, this to pay rent and keep 6 of us. A slight difference there.
As for you and Laura agreeing with her decision to steal this money to give her kids a way of life,well, I imagine there are many working dads out there who would love to taking home 350 quid a week to give their kids a way of life, let alone being overpaid by that amount. It would be nice to know exactly how much this parasite was was being given and how many kids she had, then let’s hear from people who work to keep their families and find out how they feel about THEIR money being used to keep this family in what must have been highly enviable conditions.
” Someone else could be to blame”?????? who on earth could be to blame for her dishonest actions, was she forced to steal this money?. No, it was a conscious decision on her part and she got caught, GOOD.
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Laura, while your story evokes a certain amount of sympathy let’s remember it takes two to tango. Was the break up ALL his fault??. Sadly, marriages do break up but usually there’s a reason for a man to walk out after 11 years.
As for the story not always as it appears this womans story is exactly as it appears. She fraudulently claimed 85,000 pounds of tax payers money to which she was not entitled ipso facto she is a criminal and was rightly convicted. As for your spouse not contributing, try the CSA, I’m sure they could find him and collect what you’re due.
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Sadly this happens all the time , the amount of people that are falsely claiming probably outweigh the genuine ones. it’s impossible for the authority to catch them all but hopefully this kind of publicity will encourage people that their referrals do get heard.
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