Benefit Fraud Weekly Review – 06 February 2012.

A 26 year old Belfast man was sentenced to three months imprisonment last week at Belfast Magistrate’s Court. He declared he had not received payments of Jobseekers Allowance amounting to £128.04 thus receiving duplicate payments. Investigations determined he had indeed cashed both original and duplicate payments.

At Belfast Crown Court last week a 51 year old man was sentenced to 150 hours Community Service on each of two counts to run concurrently. He had failed to declare his work to the Department resulting in an overpayment of Income Support totalling £18,806.17 which now must be repaid to the Department.

Finally at Coleraine Magistrate’s Court a 37 year old man was fined a total of £225 for failing to report work to the Department. His overpayment amounted to £2,842.62 which must be repaid.

The total number of cases convicted through the courts in 2011/2012 is now 428.

If you wish to report benefit fraud please refer to our Fraud pages.

If you wish to read about other cases please refer to: News Releases – Department for Social Development