Benefit fruad

[clcole32]

I am in court on friday 17th august for benefit fraud of �1700. I work 10 hours a week and was convinced that I a letter to them stating that I was working but they say that they never received a letter.
What do you think my penalty will be? I will of course pay the money back to them but I have my 12 year old daughter who I bring up on my own to deal with so am very scared that I wil be put in prison and she will be taken away from me.

[Vesper99]

Benefit fraud is taken seriously and is an imprisonable offence.
On a guilty plea or finding of guilt you will probably have a 3 week adjournment for a pre-sentence report. This will either be serious enough for a community penalty or so serious that prison may be considered. Then you will see probation for the report to be written. Even if the matter is adjourned on a 'so serious' basis, I think it very unlikely in the present climate that you will actual;ly receive a custodial sentence. An alternative would be a Fast Delivery Report which would be looking at a community penalty on the day of first hearing.
The fact that you are a single parent will be a mitigating factor.

[New Judge]

You should make it clear, vesper99, that being a single parent will not mitigate this offence. It may be taken into account as offender mitigation (in the same way that being of previous good character might, for example). But clcole32 should not be given the impression that single parenthood will mitigate offences.

[spaced]

yes benefit fraud is frowned upon, but �1700 is not the highest amounts, surely he would not be imprisoned for such a trivial offence. We are short of prison space as it is, I hardly think that this is worth a prison sentence.

THen again th british system is a load of rubbish. good luck mate, hope it all works out for you and your daughter

[margher]

Hello. i am new to this forum i just like to tell you the bulls up with DWP Benefits fraud and the DWP debt management does it started 4 years when i came disabled the fraud got a tip off i was working as a self employed builder what it was this claim for incapacity took about 8 to 10 weeks to process and i had massive credit card and other related bills to stop the baliffs anyhow i did about 4 weeks work declared my earnings to them and before i said i have some work they told me to declare it which i did later that year i had to go for several tests at the hospital for chest problems then the fraud said tried to interview with my lawyer then i became ill during the interview and my lawyer closed the case with no evidence then about 3 months later they started taking money off me and paying someone else's overpayment off still to this day as i am now disabled for THE DWP OWES ME A FULL REFUND WITH INTEREST FOR 3 YEARS