A BENEFITS fraudster has been jailed for stealing £88,639 from the public purse over eight years.

Married dad William Watts, 45, has been locked up for 12 months for pocketing incapacity benefit, income support, housing and council tax benefits while working full time.

Watts, of Russell Gardens, in Poole, began receiving benefits in the late 1990s while off work with depression, Bournemouth Crown Court heard on Friday.

But he carried on taking the money from 2003 to 2011, while earning around £15,000 a year from DCA Marketing Limited, in Creekmoor.

Prosecuting, Robert Grey, said the largest of the three fraud charges was £49,747 from May 2005 to February 2011.

The other claims break down into £31,516 in income support, £5,657 in housing benefit and £1,728 council tax benefit.

Mitigating, Jeffrey Norie-Miller said Watts, a dad of four, had made full and frank admissions when confronted by investigators from the Department for Work and Pensions.

Watts has suffered from mental health problems and depression since a breakdown in his 20s, Mr Norie-Miller told the court.

Mr Norie-Miller said: “He does not make weak and feeble excuses about his behaviour.

“He simply buried his head in the sand about his situation.”

Watts is the main breadwinner for his wife of 23 years, their four children and a six-year-old child of his dead sister-in-law.

He has been paying back £175 a month, Mr Norie-Miller added.

Sentencing, Judge Peter Johnson said: “For a period you augmented your salary by approximately £10,000 per annum by claims which you were not, in fact, entitled to.

“You no doubt continued to fill in forms that your circumstances had not changed.”

Judge Johnson read letters from Watts’ doctor and bosses, describing him as an organised, efficient and courteous worker.

“I am sure all of those were true matters,” Judge Johnson added.

“But these were frauds of a long period, defrauding the public purse of extremely large sums of money.”

Thieves who cost taxpayer £1bn annually

 

BENEFIT thieves cost the taxpayer around £1billion per year, the Department for Work and Pensions says.


A spokesman said: “People across the country are rightly outraged when fraudsters cynically steal from a system designed to help people.


“We are committed to stopping benefit fraud by catching criminals at the front line and our reforms are making the benefit system less open to abuse.”


Since October 2010, the DWP has been trying to clamp down on fraudsters with a tougher strategy.


It includes a mobile regional taskforce to thoroughly investigate benefit and tax credit, using private sector analytical techniques like credit reference agencies and a new IT system automatically informing local authorities of new claims or changes in benefits and tax credits.


They also run joint investigations with HMRC and local authorities and call for tougher penalties to deter fraudsters.


Suspect frauds can be reported confidentially to the National Benefit Fraud Hotline on 0800 854440.