Benefit Cheat Jailed After Claiming Nearly £64, 000

Woman owned two properties in London and Turkey

A Chiswick woman has been jailed for six months for benefit fraud.

Anne Wicks, of Bath Road, was sentenced at Guildford Crown Court after pleading guilty to fraud amounting to almost £64,000.

The London Borough of Hounslow’s Fraud Unit worked on the case with investigators from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) after it came to light that Wicks had failed to notify both the council and the DWP that she had owned two properties, one in London and one in Turkey.

Wicks also had numerous bank accounts, including one off-shore, that she had not declared, and the capital in these accounts was in excess of the prescribed limits.

As a result of her actions, Wicks was prosecuted for falsely claiming a total of £63,906.81 in Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit, Income Support and Pension Credit between November 2001 and March 2009.

She is now required to repay the benefit she falsely claimed, and was sentenced to serve six months in custody.

On sentencing, the judge commented that the crime had been committed over seven and a half years simply to fund a certain lifestyle, rather than trying to rectify a desperate situation. In fact, not long after this crime came to light, Wicks made a further false claim for pension credits.

May 10 2010