Benefits claimant fined by magistrates

A former Bury resident has been convicted after accepting housing benefit for a property she no longer lived in.

Gemma Riley (aged 31) had moved out of her rented property in Moorside Avenue, Ainsworth but continued to receive payments of housing benefit into her bank account worth more than £1,800.

A data matching exercise alerted investigators that she had left the area almost nine months earlier and had not notified the housing benefits office that she had moved.

Riley, who now lives in Fleetwood, was found guilty in her absence by Bury magistrates of failing to declare a change in her circumstances. She was fined £400 and ordered to pay costs of £360, and will have to repay the benefit overpayment.

ENDS

Press release issued: 18 January 2013.