A SCROUNGER who claimed she was too ill to work received £48,000 in benefits over seven years – despite having a full time job.
Patricia Veasey, aged 55, of Atlantic Road, Low Edges, earned up to £1,200 a month at nursing homes in Sheffield, and even took 10 qualifications, while claiming incapacity, housing and council tax benefit.
Sheffield Crown Court heard Veasey, aged 55, was signed off work with chronic obstructive airways disease in June 1998.
Yet the following year she started full time at Bowshaw View Nursing Home in Low Edges, and worked there for a year.
A year later she left and took a job at Dalewood View Care Centre in Woodseats and stayed there until 2006.
Prosecutor Simon Pallo said in the seven years she was on benefits Veasey was asked numerous times to fill in new claims forms – and each time stated she was not working.
The Department for Work and Pensions caught up with her in July 2007 – and she made full confession, claiming she was in a lot of debt, he added.
Judith Seaborne, defending, said Veasey's claim had not been dishonest at the outset.
But Judge Alan Goldsack QC said it was a serious benefit fraud which would have meant jail – if it hadn't been for the two-year delay in bringing the case to court.
He told Veasey: "Even criminals are entitled to be prosecuted within a reasonable time. Two years is totally unreasonable for anyone to have hanging over them with the fear and in your case, expectation, that you will be sent to prison.
"Because of the delay I am going to suspend the sentence."
Criticising the Department for Work and Pensions, he added: "Why it takes so long to bring a straightforward case to the court I don't know, unless the DWP is chronically overworked or incompetent."
He sentenced Veasey to 40 weeks' jail, suspended for one year, and 200 hours of unpaid community work.
The court heard she is repaying the incapacity benefit at £2 a fortnight and the other benefits at £13.20 a month.
After the hearing Vernon Sanderson, DWP fraud investigator, said there were lessons to be learned.
He added: "I wouldn't accept we were an incompetent department. In this case I accept things did not go as quickly as they could. We have a tremendous amount of work pressure at the moment because of the economic downturn."
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