Plan B Forum

A benefits cheat has been given 178 years to pay back the money she swindled from taxpayers.

Nicola Daly claimed £100,000 in council tax, housing benefit and income support payments for almost nine years.

Today Daly, of Tilehurst, Berkshire, was starting a 16-month jail sentence for the fraud which was only discovered after her elderly mother-in-law inadvertently revealed the deception it with a residential care application.

A judge heard that Daly claimed the cash after lying to her local council that she was raising her two children alone.
In fact the cheat had lived with her partner, who worked for John Lewis, for several years and continued to do so despite repeatedly claiming she had been estranged from him for 15 years.

The trickster was finally caught after her elderly mother-in-law applied for residential care and declared that she owned a house where her son Steven Randall and Daly both lived.

The 39-year-old was sentenced to 16 months in prison at Reading Crown Court after admitting five charges of fraud and making false statements.

The court heard she is repaying the amount at a rate of £50 a month, which will take a staggering 178 years for the total to be recovered.

Alison Ginn prosecuting, said: 'Between June 2004 and March 2013, very nearly nine years, Daly claimed and received benefits in the form of income support, housing support and council tax benefits to which she was not entitled.

That'll teach her!

I'm presuming she has no assets, and is facing a 16 month prison term; since we don't have debtors prison, what would you have the judge do? At 50 pounds a month it's likely the government will receive some compensation; just posting a judgment of 100,000 pounds against would probably mean they'd receive nothing.

Make her work to repay the money she owes?

They should probably have a better auditing system in place if it took 9 years to discover this fraud, and then only because the elderly mother inadvertently let slip the incriminating information.

Gob wrote:Make her work to repay the money she owes?

Are there jobs she could get which would permit her to repay it in this lifetime and also provide for her family, not to mention herself? My guess is that she is not particularly skilled at anything; even working two jobs (and I don't know who would care for her children 16 hours a day while she worked), I doubt she could make much of a dent in years.

And the other practical problem, what if she refuses to pay; we don't have debtors prison and she is serving a term because of her fraud--what else can the government do but seize whatever assets she gets when and if she acquires any. The very poor have something in common with the very rich--they rarely pay their judgments unless hey want to (just ask Donald Trump with, what, two bankruptcies).

BSG--I agree; if she only owed a few thousand pounds repayment might be a possibility.

I find myself in agreement with Big RR and BSG on this...

If 50 pounds a month is what one can reasonably obtain from this person, that's all you can do...

Gob wrote:Make her work to repay the money she owes?

Who would hire her? And at what rate?

Even if the Council was forced to hire her, she still wouldn't have to turn all she earned over to them --- unless you're talking about reinstituting slavery. . . .

ETA: It seems BigRR pointed out these same issues already. That's what I get for posting before reading!

I had initially drafted a longer response, but was basically reiterating Big RR's points, so erased most of it.

I do want to add that this is a problem we regularly face in the criminal justice system and Gob's sentiment is what we hear from the public on a regular basis - so he's echoing the widespread societal view, I believe.

But the essential problem is that in addition to the issues others have already pointed out - she'd likely never make enough to pay more than the nominal monthly amount she's been ordered to, and still pay her basic living expenses - any other remedy creates a larger burden on the taxpayers than the theft they've already been victims of: they are already going to pay for her 16 months in jail, and if she were sentenced to a longer term to punish her for the theft, the taxpayers would pay for that, too - and maybe bear the cost of caring for any dependents she has while she's in custody. If she were sentenced to make larger monthly payments, the taxpayers would pick up the bill for any social services (food assistance, fuel assistance, housing assistance) she would qualify for because of the obligation she had to make toward restitution.

Any way you look at it, the system - the taxpayer - pays.

The best way to avoid situations like this is to have a more rigorous auditing system that would hopefully catch most fraud and abuse of public benefits before the amount stolen becomes more than the thief could ever possibly repay.

Could always hang her I suppose...

They would probably recover more back from her if they would kill her and sell her usable organs...

Joe Guy wrote:They would probably recover more back from her if they would kill her and sell her usable organs...

See, now that's the kind of "creative solution" we need to see more of...

I understand that on the black market, one kidney alone can go for 20 grand...

You figure two kidneys, a heart, a pair of lungs, a liver, and a set of corneas, and the taxpayers will get back every penny with a little interest besides...

What's not to like?

Plus she would be unlikely to reoffend!

Sure . . . except you are all overlooking the fact that a case involving imposition of the death penalty costs the system multiple times more than any other criminal case, so no cost savings would be achieved.

I know, I know . . . I need to lighten up.

I got dibs on the liver.

Hold on there oldr, I think we may need to auction that off, I may need the liver!

I was thinking of eating it. A little bacon and onions. But if you need it, it's all yours.

We could split it. I've got some fava beans and a nice chianti...

No chianti for me, but some unsweetened iced tea would work.