Halesowen benefits cheat had £140,000 in savings

Janet Greenway collected the 'small fortune' in gifts and bequests from people who held her in high regard, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard.

Then the retired seamstress stitched up the authorities by keeping the windfall secret while continuing to collect housing and council tax relief her new-found wealth made her ineligible for.

She also claimed pension credit and had picked up a total of £35,500 in eight years from the scams before they were uncovered by investigators, revealed Mr David Bennett, prosecuting.

Mr Michael Brooks, defending 64-year-old Greenway who walks with a stick, said the claims had not been fraudulent from the outset and disclosed that the trickster had now repaid all the money she conned out of the system.

He said that she had significant health problems and concluded: "She has learned her lesson and recognises that what she did was stupid." The defendant should not have claimed the benefit after her savings topped £10,000, the court was told.

Greenway, of Pippin Avenue, Halesowen, who was of previous good character, admitted failing to notify the authorities of her change in circumstances and providing false documentation, but was spared jail.

Recorder Stephen Linehan told her: "What you did was not stupid. It was thoroughly dishonest and criminal.

"Over the past few years you have received what most people would regard as a small fortune. I am sure the £140,000 was well deserved but you remained silent about it and for eight years while claiming £25,000 of public money in housing and other benefits to which you were no longer entitled.

"Then you commenced another fraud in which you made a false statement that allowed you to be paid £10,500 in pension credit you should not have had.

"The hundreds of thousands of pensioners who live on very little without resorting to fraud will be filled with a sense of outrage at your behaviour.

"Your conduct deserves a prison sentence but your lack of previous conviction, ill health and the fact you have repaid the money allows me to suspend the term."

Greenway was given a one-year jail term suspended under supervision for two years and told to pay £340 costs.