News / Community service for benefits fraud
A SHETLAND mother who admitted fraudulently obtaining almost £9,000 in benefits over a 10 month period escaped being sent to jail when she appeared at Lerwick Sheriff Court on Wednesday.
The court heard that 27 year old Katrina Johnson, of 40 Robertson Crescent, Lerwick, had claimed income support, housing and council tax benefit without informing the authorities that her estranged husband was still contributing to the household.
Defence agent Gregor Kelly said that Johnson’s husband stayed over on Friday and Saturday nights between May 2011 and July 2012 when she was claiming as a single mother.
Kelly said he slept on the couch, but they “very occasionally” had marital relations and he sometimes bought food and items for the couple’s two children.
He said the couple were now reconciled and Johnson, who is expecting their third child next week, had been paying back the authorities at a rate of £35 a week.
The lawyer also pointed out that while Johnson was not entitled to any housing or council tax benefit, she was entitled to all but £981 of the income support she received.
Sheriff Philip Mann said that anyone caught defrauding the benefits system of more than £5,000 could be sent to prison.
However bearing in mind that the amount the authorities had actually lost was little more than £5,000, and the fact she was a full time mother expecting a child, he restricted the sentence to 195 hours community service which she has one year to carry out.
The sheriff said: “I can well understand how people can be misguided, misinformed and misadvised and that is partly the situation here, but the onus is entirely upon you and no one else and you must pay the penalty for that.”
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