She Should Have Been An MP.

[tommy.irene]

Benefits cheat branded 'one of the worst ever' who claimed she was agoraphobic while travelling the world from India to Argentina enjoying a luxury lifestyle is jailed

• Former model Tracy Johnson, 52, claimed she was ‘prisoner in own home’
• Said she was so unwell she couldn't walk more than five metres unaided
• But mother, from Somerset, was actually enjoying 'champagne lifestyle'
• She travelled the world as she falsely claimed benefits of around £50,000

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2611623/Benefits-cheat-branded-one-worst-claimed-agoraphobic... 

[tommy.irene]

If she was an MP, she could have said sorry and got off..

[bankhaunter]

It's odd that whilst many people with serious problems have great difficulty in getting and keeping benefits for their disabilty, some seem to have no problem at all even though they could so easily be checked up on.

How simple would it be to ensure that a person claiming to be badly agrophobic and bedridden was actually at home?

There are couples who live together but claim benefit as single people which includes housing benefit for the house that is not lived in, it would be easy to ask those on such benefit to prove the property was being used by the ocassional production of an energy bill but to my knowledge that is never done.

[merehazle]

Hello, youg man.  long time no see.

Yes, but most of them do get off.  Have you watched ''Saints and Sinners'' BBC I  every week day usually about 11.45 am?

The answer for crimes that you might have thought would deter them is ''SUSPENDED'' sentences. Suspended, suspended, suspended.

And as if in so many cases benefit cheats would not have stashed it away in case they are caught. And some of the thieves if you have been watching nick hundreds of thousand of pounds.  Very occasionally a small prison sentence is given, but so what it seems to some of them its worth it if  hundreds of thousands of pounds are stashed away.

Yes, the judges have guide lines.  Guide the thieves on how to get away with it guide lines. Hard labour, and work to you pay every penny back would be the cure.  But why the hell would you want to give them a sentence they deserve? Daft ain't it? Considering they had a ''choice'' in the first place, and their victims US, taxpayers dIdn't.

[tommy.irene]

Crime does pay.. Johnson, who has only paid back £600, was jailed for one year for 13 charges of fraud, dishonestly making a false representation and dishonestly failing to notify a change in circumstances between January 2008 and July 2012.That means she will be out in 4 months

[blackburn_stevie]

I wonder just how many folk there are in the country that are in the same position as me?

I'm disabled with ankylosing spondylitis. I'm with it for life and it will never get any better. All that the docs can do is try to lessen the pain, Currently I'm on Paracetemol. Dihydrocodeine, Gabapentin plus injections into my neck every few days. Consequently, I never know if I'll be able to get out of bed. I can usually get downstairs and sit myself in front of the computer/tv but not always and I can't walk past the drive and I can't drive more than a mile or so. BUT, I don't claim any benefits. I live off my Army disability pension. For myself, I hate scroungers. Folk that need benefits and so claim what they are entitled to are fine. It's the ones that claim more than they are entitled to or in other ways abuse the system. I would be perfectly happy to be given a name and address of a possible scrounger. I would then go there with a camera and film the person's activities. Maybe they get around in a wheelchair, maybe they run around like a spring chicken. But here's the thing. If I did that, it would be claimed that I could get a job. I'd love one. But whi is going to employ a bloke whe may only get into work once in a fortnight?

[bankhaunter]

BUT, I don't claim any benefits.

If you are entitled to a disability payment you should claim it, it is supposed to help with the extra costs you suffer because of your disability, nothing to do with employment.

That's what we pay taxes for.

It's when very simple checks would quickly expose cheats such as the one in the article but are not made which is so annoying especially when such checks run very little risk of a person being treated wrongly.

[rose2008-2008]

I know i have said it before and if you are genuinly disabled then you should get every penny of what your entitled too. But i know people who are claiming or said they are claiming and getting a lot of money a month and i have seen them out on a stick to make it look good some days and saying they have bad legs and i have heard tell they are getting money for doing work for someone. If you cannot prove it it makes you nervous of reporting anyone. I would love to know HOW many people have reported someone and what the outcome was!!. They say they are checking up on people but are they??. Does not seem like it to me!!.

[merehazle]

Sorry, Refering to my #4  the programme is called ''Saints & Scroungers''. Not ''Saints &  Sinners''.

Anyway, you may have seen it today? If not it will be on BBC Iplayer tomorrow .

A young woman cheated our benefits system out of £81,000, and although clearly guilty, pleaded not guilty.  

She at her first trial claimed she had laryngitist's, (there is nothing they wont try and can you wonder with these daft soft sentences?) so the trial had to be cancelled for 6 months.

After which a whole new jury needed to be selected. The cost of all this was not given, neither was a mention of them trying to claw some money back. She was given a year in prison (which in her case means about 6 months) I should think her children will need to go into care, so what will be the final bill be I wonder? Truth is she and most like her don't give a toss. And that that money could have gone to those that paid in for it... the old sick & vulnerable, mattered not.

 If you get time have a look on Iplayer tomorrow because you really need to see it (and her typical welcome to the Jeremy kyle show up face) to believe it.

And your opinion back here tomorrow perhaps?  Or today if you see it?  (wink).

See you.

[bookhunter2007]

Dacre's Drip strikes again. Might be worth reading this before anyone gets the urge to start dishing out Black Triangles >

http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-qa-benefit-fraud-perspective/15796

[al**bear]

Now now Books

You can't  go throwing facts, at a Daily Mail agenda driven smear campaign,

thats just not playing the demonisation game

[uk_uu92]

So much effort for so little reward.