Living on benefits

[DimPrawn]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/m...de/5087058.stm

A 45-year-old businessman who drove a Rolls Royce while claiming more than £50,000 in benefits has been convicted of fraud.
Terence Pendleton, was convicted of 13 charges relating to benefit fraud by a jury at Liverpool Crown Court.

Undercover investigators filmed him living in a luxury £500,000 house in Knowsley Village, Merseyside.

He claimed he was crippled, depressed, unable to work and living alone in a dingy bedsit in West Derby, Liverpool.



Even so, how does a "cripple living in a bedsit" get £50,000 worth of benefits?

[thunderlizard]

By signing on 13 times so it seems. That's what they aspire to in Liverpool. It's a bit like being one of the shadow cabinet with 13 directorships.

[threaded]

I saw a video once of a chap, get out of his car, walk to the benefit office, sign on, go back to his car, change jackets, put a hat on, walk back to the benefits office and sign on again, go back to the car, and as I understood it then drove to another benefit office to do much the same.

Only 13 false identities? Must have been pretty sloppy about it, or those were the only ones they got him on.

[xoggoth]

Even with an extra 50k a year tax free how did a market trader afford a 500k house and a Rolls? Can you really do that well selling power tools in a market? How did he get a mortgage? Under sources of income he could hardly list 50k from benefit fraud.

In contrast, the place he claimed to be living was sparsely furnished with several tins of beans and spaghetti dated from 1995 and 1996.

The missus cleared out the kitchen cupboards the other day and found several items labelled best before 1997. She was going to chuck them out but I persuaded here that if it was safe to eat Captain Scott's food store, 1997 was no problem. We are not made of money.

[AtW]

Even with an extra 50k a year tax free how did a market trader afford a 500k house and a Rolls?

Got in debt.