In the Media

Benefits cheat caught leaping over garden fence

PUBLISHED April 2, 2012
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John Deeds, 44, was awarded a high rate of disability living allowance on the grounds he was barely mobile - and even needed help getting out of bed.

But undercover officers from the Department for Work and Pensions became suspicious and secretly filmed him.

And Deeds, of Rosewood Road, Blackley, Manchester, was caught on camera breaking into a jog before hurdling a garden fence.

Other footage showed him climbing over the same fence while carrying a vacuum cleaner, and cleaning a van.

He was even caught pushing someone else in a heavy wheelchair.

Now he has been jailed for four weeks after pleading guilty to a charge of failing to notify the DWP of an improvement in his condition.

He is already serving a 40-month sentence after being exposed as an identity fraudster who used 17 identities to swindle nearly £300,000 of goods and cash.

He posed as a successful company boss and duped a string of businesses into giving him credit on false pretences.

He admitted 12 counts of fraud, two counts of perverting the course of justice, and retaining unlawful credit.

The latest sentence, handed out at Manchester magistrates court, will run concurrently with the one he is already serving. The court heard Deeds received benefit payments of £9,359 to which he was not entitled.

Lord Freud, the minister for welfare reform, said after the case: "We have a duty to the taxpayer and our customers to make sure that these vital benefits only go to those who need them. Benefit fraud takes money away from the most vulnerable. "It is a crime and we are committed to stopping it by catching criminals and making sure our reforms make the benefit system less open to abuse."

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