£35,000 Telford benefits cheat avoids going to prison
A Telford woman who fraudulently claimed more than £35,000 in benefits and enjoyed treats including a family holiday to Florida has escaped a jail sentence.
Mandy Flint let relatives live in the house being paid for by housing benefit when she returned to live with her husband.
She later took out a new tenancy simply so she could keep claiming the money.
Flint, 57, of Boulton Grange, Randlay, admitted 14 charges relating to fraudulently claiming housing and unemployment benefits.
Judge Jim Tindall said that while she had not set out at the outset to defraud, Flint had gone on to offend in a sophisticated way to ensure she could still claim benefits.
He gave her a 12-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and ordered her to do 150 hours of unpaid work in the community and attend specified activities for 10 days.
Mr Paul McCarthey, prosecuting, told Shrewsbury Crown Court that Flint had begun to claim housing benefit, legally, when she and her husband were living apart in 2003.
But she later took advantage of circumstances to carry out the fraud.
When she returned to the family home in May 2006 she failed to tell the authorities and continued to claim the money.
The court heard she allowed her son and his partner to live in the house.
She also claimed income support, then employment support allowance and then job seekers allowance without making the authorities aware she had returned to live with her husband.
Mr McCarthey told the court: "At one point she had 37 different bank accounts, three of them joint with her husband."
The court heard the family had a comfortable lifestyle and were able to afford foreign holidays.
Mr McCarthey said that in 2010 the family went on a holiday to Orlando.
He said the room bookings made for the holiday to Florida made it obvious that Mr and Mrs Flint were living as husband and wife.
In 2001 Flint took on a tenancy at a new address but never lived there.
Mr McCarthey told the court: "She said that she was living there alone when in fact the address remained unoccupied.
"She used it only to collect post and as an address for which she could claim benefit."
Judge Tindall said that the claiming of benefits had not begun in a dishonest way and accepted that it had been a complicated family situation.
Speaking to Mandy Flint, he said: "There came a point when you were starting to enjoy the benefits.
"You did not want to give them up and so started arranging your affairs in quite a sophisticated way to make sure you could still claim them."
