Pension credit fraudster claimed mum's money from DWP for five years after death
When the DWP's calls failed to go through, an officer uncovered the fraud
PA
A fraudster swindled taxpayers out of over £50,000 by claiming pension credit in her dead mother's name, a court has found.
Angela Potter, 63, raked in the weekly payments for five years after her mother's 2017 death - with the scale of the fraud only uncovered in mid-2022.
The scandal came to light when the Department for Work and Pensions tried to get in touch with Potter's mother.
When the DWP's calls failed to go through, an officer visited her home in Walton - but it was Potter who answered the door, who then "frankly admitted her mother had died in April 2017", a court heard.
Potter pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud at Liverpool Crown Court
After being caught out, the 63-year-old from Vauxhall in Liverpool was probed on why she failed to tell the DWP about the fraud.
She told the court: "I wanted to - I was just scared as time went on. I was like, oh gosh... [It] just went on too long and I was too scared, really."
Yesterday, at Liverpool Crown Court, prosecutor Carmel Wilde said: "The defendant's mother was claiming a state pension and pension credit.
"It was after her mother's death she continued to obtain these weekly benefits, and it continued for a five year period... In total, she obtained £52,796.81."
Potter said she had used £5,500 of the swindled taxpayer cash to fund her mother's funeral and headstone - but claimed she "didn't know" why she had stolen the remaining £47,296.
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The 63-year-old added: "I just hated every minute of doing it. Hated it. I just wish I could turn the clock back."
Her defence, John Rowan, said: "Angela Potter is 63... It's sad to see a woman of her age without previous convictions in the dock at the crown court, potentially receiving a custodial sentence.
"When this matter came to light at the beginning of 2022, this defendant describes a feeling of relief about the five years of her claiming these benefits, which she knew she shouldn't have been doing.
"But as time went on. she found it more and more difficult to own up because she knew the trouble she would get in, and that trouble she has had to accept."
Rowan pointed to her admissions to DWP officers, interviews, and her guilty plea as examples of Potter's "genuine remorse and shame" over her actions.
Potter's admissions to DWP officers formed part of the evidence for her "genuine remorse and shame"
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He told Liverpool Crown Court how the 63-year-old part-time church cleaner was a "hardworking family woman" who cares for her ill husband.
On September 2, Potter pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud committed between April 4, 2017, and May 2022.
Judge Judith Bond said she had taken "a large amount of money over a significant period of time - money that you were not entitled to and should not have had."
But Bond accepted her mitigation, adding that Potter posed a low risk of reoffending and posed no danger to the public.
She sentenced the 63-year-old to a total of eight months in prison, suspended for 12 months, and ordered her to complete 12 days of rehabilitation.
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