A GOVERNMENT tax credits adviser was sent to prison yesterday after being found guilty of running a £25,000 benefit fraud.
Michelle Patten was employed by HM Revenue and Customs to give expert guidance to claimants.
But the mother-of-three from Gosforth, Newcastle, ignored the regulations she knew so well to cheat the system.
Patten, right, was overpaid by up to £9,000 a year in tax credits after failing to disclose she was living with her partner, Richard Pembleton. She even enjoyed family holidays abroad while the swindle brought in the extra cash.
By the time her five-year fiddle was finally uncovered, the loss to the public purse had reached £25,293, Newcastle Crown Court heard.
Now the 38-year-old of Hollywood Avenue, is behind bars after admitting fraud between 2006 and 2011.
Imposing a six-month jail term, Judge Michael Cartlidge said: “I don’t think the public would understand if I did not pass an effective prison sentence.”
Patten, who had not been in trouble before, was an experienced and respected adviser when she began the fraud. She claimed tax credits on the basis that she was still single.
But from 2006 onwards she had been living as a couple with Mr Pembleton, the father of her youngest child. Year after year, Patten kept up the lie by signing annual declarations confirming her circumstances were unchanged. Only when suspicions last spring triggered a raid at the couple’s home was the fraud finally revealed, the court heard.
Jason Pitter, prosecuting, said: “Evidence was seized in the form of financial documents for Mr Pembleton, family photos showing him with the defendant and both of them with the children as well as family holiday photographs.
“The prosecution case is that given her employment, she would have known from the time they were living together as a couple she had a requirement to declare that and deliberately failed to do so.”
Anne Richardson, defending, said Patten felt “great shame”, took full responsibility and, having lost her job, would struggle to find similarly paid employment. Miss Richardson added: “She is acutely aware of what she has done through her own stupidity.”
She urged the court to suspend any prison sentence to reflect Patten’s previous good character, remorse, and guilty plea at the first opportunity.
But Judge Cartlidge said: “What significantly aggravates the case is that throughout this period she was working for the revenue as a tax credits adviser so she knew very well how wrong her declarations were.”
