Help Sitemap Home Skip Navigation Contact Us Disability Statement

wall and floor tiles and accessories
 
 
Friday, 3rd September 2010

Benefits fraud couple jailed

Click on thumbnail to view image
Click on thumbnail to view image
Click on thumbnail to view image
Click on thumbnail to view image
Click on thumbnail to view image

Published Date: 03 February 2010
A MAN and his partner who bought a plush caravan, a 52-inch plasma
television, a sports car and foreign holidays while fraudulently claiming benefits have been jailed.
William Stone and Dianne Ward claimed more than £70,000 in benefits but failed to tell authorities that he was working and she had savings.
Judge Wright at Lancaster Crown Court said the pair were: "Both part of a long-term systematic assault on the benefits system."

The court heard that William Henry Stone, 61, formerly of Regent Leisure Park, More-cambe, was overpaid £37,349.37 in Incapacity Benefit over a 10-year period and Dianne Jennifer Ward was overpaid £34,830 in various benefits. From December 1996, Stone worked for a succession of companies, as either a building labourer or a cleaner. Since 2006, he had been running his own cleaning business called BJ Cleaning Services, even securing a contract to clean caravans at the site where he and Ward were living.

During this period, Depart-ment of Work and Pensions (DWP) investigators secretly filmed the couple working at the holiday centre.
In 2007, Ward made a bogus claim for housing benefit and council tax benefit which she submitted to Lancaster City Council.

She claimed she was renting a caravan for £500 from BJ Cleaning Services but in fact she jointly purchased the caravan along with Stone for £46,000.

For full story, see this week's Visitor.

Page 1 of 1

  • Last Updated: 03 February 2010 9:17 AM
  • Source: n/a
  • Location: Morecambe
 
 
 


Sister Newspapers:
Press Complaints Commission

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Press Complaints Commission’s Code of Practice. If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the PCC by clicking here.