A PENSIONER who received more than £38,000 he was not entitled to over the course a three-and-a-half year benefit fraud has been spared jail.
Peter Joseph Fillingham was told he had “narrowly” avoided a prison sentence as he was handed 210 hours of community service by the Royal Court yesterday.
The 69-year-old admitted four counts of fraudulently receiving income support and a further count of withholding information in relation to an undeclared bank account.
The court heard that when the defendant applied for income support on 15 November 2021, he had to answer a series of questions about his employment, any benefits he received abroad and his bank accounts.
He had told them he was self-employed but ceased trading in 2021 as he was approaching retirement – stating that he only received £90 from a private pension with Aviva and that he had one HSBC bank account.
However, when an investigating officer wrote to the defendant last January asking if he had worked in another country and if he had been in receipt of a pension from another country, Fillingham admitted changes to his circumstances that he had failed to declare.
He explained that he’d worked in England from 1972 to 1977 and was in receipt of a state pension in the sum of £252.80 per month from the UK Department for Work and Pensions.
Later that month, he provided further information, including a letter from the DWP which confirmed his UK state pension began in February 2023 – which he had failed to tell Jersey’s Income Support team within 14 days as required.
Fillingham also provided bank statements for an HSBC account that he opened in 2015 – information he withheld when applying for the benefit.
These bank statements also showed that he received a loan payment of £30,000 from a local lender in April 2022 – another change of circumstances that he failed to declare.
The statements from both the declared and undeclared HSBC accounts also revealed numerous deposit and credit entries from builders’ merchants and individuals which totalled £23,519.74.
In addition to this, Facebook posts from Fillingham indicated that he was in employment, which he was also obligated to inform the department of, but failed to do so.
It was also discovered through his declared HSBC account that he travelled out of Jersey on at least 17 occasions, without telling the department as the defendant was required to do so, meaning he was in breach of a 28-day travel limit while receiving the benefit.
Crown Advocate Carla Carvalho, prosecuting, said that the defendant’s failure to comply with the travel limit alone meant he was overpaid £1,175,24.
In an interview in April last year, he accepted that he had failed to declare his DWP pension income and earnings from self-employment – but that he thought he could work one or two days a week without it affecting his IS payment.
In total, the court heard Fillingham received £38,227.14 more than he was entitled to, of which £1,120.00 has already been recovered from him through reductions in his IS payments of £35 a week.
Delivering the court’s sentence, the Bailiff Robert MacRae, presiding, said that Fillingham had “narrowly” avoided jail time.
He said: “These are serious offences and they are not victimless. All taxpayers and contributors to the relevant funds operated by the government are the victims of your deception which was extensive and prolonged.
“People who behave like you have in this case cut every member of our community, by taking money to which they are not entitled to – an affront not only to taxpayers but those who legitimately need benefits to enjoy reasonable standards of living.”
Jurats Averty and Gardener were sitting.
