A mother who claimed thousands in benefits for three children she invented has been jailed for a year for fraud after her scheme was uncovered.
A court heard heroin addict Lisa Ellington named the non-existent children Janine, Thomas and Courtney, and spent some of the £60,541 she swindled on feeding her drug problem.
Ellington, 27, had been legitimately claiming tax credits and child support for her eldest child, aged two, but then began submitting fraudulent claims for both children following their July 2004 adoption, after one was abused by her boyfriend.
The deception was not discovered until April 2009.
Ellington began claiming for her invented children between February 2006 and May 2007. The children had the surname of her partner, Nicholas Grainger.
But prosecutor Rashad Mohammed told Warwick Crown Court: ‘In fact those three children do not exist. She (Ellington) had fabricated the names and dates of birth, and the claim was accepted as valid.’
He said Ellington went on to request payments to be increased on four further occasions on the basis at least one of the children was suffering from disabilities.
‘That was false, because two of them were not disabled, and the others did not exist’, Mr Mohammed said.
The scam was uncovered when Ellington and Grainger were arrested in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, in 2009 as part of a class-A drug sting called Operation Laser.
Last year Grainger, 31, received a three-year jail term for conspiracy to supply drugs, while Ellington escaped with a community sentence.
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Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 7:05 pm