A woman whose job it was to decide on who was eligible for Universal Credit falsely claimed £18,000 of Universal Credit.
Rebecca Hanway abused her position as a case manager to defraud huge sums of money from her employers, the Department of Work and Pensions .
A court heard that the 30-year-old, from Wigan, misrepresented her own circumstances on two Universal Credit (UC) applications and hijacked five other identities submitting a further five fraudulent UC claims in their names.
When she created these claims, Hanway the gave her own bank account details so she would receive the Universal Credit Advance Payments.
She also diverted advance payments from three other UC claims into her own bank account.
Over a period of seven months, from September 2018 until April 2019, Hanway fraudulently claimed £18, 260.95 of public money that should have gone to other claimants.
According to the Crown Prosecution Service, Hanway committed the frauds by accessing the DWP computer system and misrepresenting her own position on three occasions, leading to payments of Universal Credit.
She also changed the bank account details on a number of claims to her own bank account leading to payments and used the identity of others to obtain payments of Universal Credit.
At Bolton Crown Court, on Wednesday, she was given a 16 months jail term, suspended for 2 years and must complete 200 hours of unpaid work and attend 20 days of a rehabilitation activity.
Justine McVitie of CPS Mersey-Cheshire Fraud Unit said: “Rebecca Hanway is a serial fraudster who abused her position of trust in a government department to cheat the public purse out of thousands of pounds.
“Yet, despite earning an income of her own, she cheated and lied her way to claiming money she had no entitlement to.
“There are many demands on public money and cheats and fraudsters take money meant for others who genuinely need it.”
