Woman avoids jail over £37,000 benefits fraud

Anuysa Parmar, 51, was told she was “very fortunate” not to be jailed as a judge imposed a 24-week prison sentence suspended for two years and ordered her to do 100 hours of unpaid work after she admitted three counts of benefit fraud at Leeds Crown Court.

The court was told Parmar fraudulently claimed income support, council tax and housing benefit over a seven-year period while owning her own home which she bought from her council under the right to buy scheme. Other family members also owned a total of 10 properties between them in north Leeds, investigators said.

It is understood those were mainly semi-detached houses in an affluent area.

The court was told her initial claims for benefit were not fraudulent but over a number of years she failed to tell the authorities of her financial situation and received overpayments totalling £36,938.47.

Judge Kerry Macgill said Parmar had gained from her fraudulent activities and her crimes had passed the custody threshold, but he was able to impose a suspended sentence after hearing of her difficult life and unhappy marriage.

He told her: “You got yourself into a situation where you fell foul of the rules and did not declare what you should have declared. Many people work very hard for money and don’t make false claims for benefit and get by, by being thrifty and hard-working.

“They must feel very angry and frustrated when they see people like you taking money out of the system they are not entitled to. It sets a bad example to them,” he told her.

During the investigation into her family’s activities by Leeds City Council, the Department for Work and Pensions and West Yorkshire Police, officers discovered more than £100,000 in used notes spilling out of plastic carrier bags in the home of the defendant’s mother in the Cookridge area. The cash was confiscated by West Yorkshire Police.

Parmar was investigated along with three members of her family – her mother and two brothers who between them also falsely claimed a total of £57,194 in benefits, investigators said.

Leeds City Council began to unravel the web of lies spun by the family when data held on benefit and land registry records was cross-checked.

Despite having piles of cash on the premises and being the part-owner of land and property off Woodhouse Street in Leeds, Parmar, of Raynel Approach, Leeds, still made her fraudulent claims between February 2002 and January 2009.

Leeds City Council said two of Parmar’s brothers had died prior to sentencing after they were prosecuted for their part in the fraud.

Their elderly mother was in receipt of income support and pension credit dating back to 1985 and council tax benefit from 1993, but failed to declare that she was joint owner of land and buildings off Woodhouse Street in Leeds and a property in Holt Road in Cookridge. Owing to her ill health it was decided not to take proceedings against her.

The court was told that a confiscation hearing in connection with Parmar’s activities is now scheduled to take place in August.

Her brother Satish Parmar pleaded guilty to falsely claiming £4,586 but died prior to sentencing and a second brother Dhansuk Parmar also died before being prosecuted over the fraud.

In mitigation Anastasis Tasou said Parma moved from Leicester to Leeds to flee a violent arranged marriage and had to raise a son on her own in a culture that shunned her eventual divorce.