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Liverpool Echo
Liverpool Echo
National
Oliver Clay

The damning footage that exposed dementia-faking £740k fraudster's pack of lies

This is the shocking footage that unravelled the web of lies spun by one of the country's worst ever benefits fraudsters.

Ethel McGill was exposed as a cheat by covert surveillance, carried out by Department for Work and Pensions investigators in 2016.

McGill claimed she had "severe care needs" however damning footage shows the "untruthful and devious" fraudster walking about, unloading large bags from a car boot and lifting boxes into it.

Runcorn pensioner Terence Daley has a bathroom with much-needed repairs

The serial fraudster and amateur actress McGill swindled around £740,000 from the public over three decades.

She not only made bogus claims for a carer allowance and care package, for her fabricated health conditions, but also pretended her dad was still alive for 12 years after his death.

McGill even persuaded someone to lie in her dead father's bed under the covers to dupe benefits assessors years after he had passed away.

Ethel McGill, 68, arrives at Liverpool Crown Court this morning. (dailymirror)

The 68-year-old from Windmill Hiill, Runcorn , was sent down today at Liverpool Crown Court where Judge Steven Everett blasted her for having made "despicably dishonest claims" that her dead father was alive to help herself to his war pension.

Chester Crown Court heard at the case's opening on July 19 that McGill had registered under two names with separate doctors' surgeries.

At Brookvale Practice she presented herself as "Margaret McGill" - a woman with no conditions other than asthma, but at Castlefields Health Centre she claimed she suffered from a range of problems and had "severe care needs".

The 68-year-old first started claiming Mobility Allowance in the 1980s for asthma, arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis and weakness to her right side.

When this switched to Disability Living Allowance in 1992, McGill claimed for separate mobility and care components, and in 2014 it was reported that McGill was suffering from dementia and was incapable of doing anything for herself and that she relied on her family because of her confusion.

But in actual fact investigators established that McGill had filled in the forms herself - a far cry from "not being able to do anything herself".

McGill, who told an appeal tribunal in 1993 that she was confined to a wheelchair, was filmed in 2016 unloading a car boot. (DWP)

She had also told a tribunal that she was confined to a wheelchair.

At the case opening at Chester Crown Court on July 19 , Robert Dudley, prosecuting, said: "As a result there was a surveillance operation carried out upon her for a short time leading up to her arrest in 2016 - a team of officers watching her.

"It wasn’t 24 hour-surveillance, nothing like that, it was far more occasional than that, though some of the surveillance was captured on video.

"Ethel McGill was seen out shopping, carrying items around, including wooden shelving and armfuls of boxes, lifting, bending, generally moving around usually on her own and without assistance.

"She was seen driving the Motability car registered in her name - even though she had told others, most notably an appeal tribunal on November 11, 1993, that she did not have a driving licence, had never had lessons and couldn’t drive.



"Ethel McGill also told the same Appeal Tribunal that she had been confined to a wheelchair since April 1993 and so a witness who claimed to have seen her walking about after that time must have been wrong."

Mystery remains over what happened to the staggering £740,000 sum as McGill showed no signs of living a lavish lifestyle or extravagant spending.

A Proceeds of Crime Act hearing is due to take place at a later date to investigate the money she swindled.

She was sentenced today at Liverpool Crown Court to 70 months in prison after pleading guilty to 14 counts of benefits fraud and money laundering charges.

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