Benefits cheat mother jailed (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Benefits cheat mother jailed

3:34pm Thursday 28th May 2009 in Bradford By Jenny Loweth

A benefits cheat mother-of-four was today jailed for ripping off £45,000 from the taxpayer over a four-year period.

Martine Smorthit, 36, renewed her claim for Income Support as a lone parent only six weeks before she married her husband Mark, ten years her junior.

She pleaded guilty to dishonestly pocketing £45,355 income support, housing benefit and council tax benefit between April 2003 and March 2007.

Imprisoning her for 12 months at Bradford Crown Court, Judge Jonathan Rose told her: “You are a mother, a wife and a thief.”

He said Smorthit, who claimed under her maiden name of Muff, resorted to “easy criminality” while her drug-taking husband Mark lived a life “not benefiting his family one iota”.

Judge Rose said Smorthit, formerly of Braine Croft, Buttershaw, Bradford, applied for income support on March 13, 2003, saying she had no partner. On April 26 that year she married.

“You had opportunity after opportunity to alter your status,” the judge said.

He conceded the money did not go on high living, such as cars and holidays, but said Smorthit could have rid herself of her husband or sorted matters out with the benefit office.

When benefit officers became suspicious, Smorthit tried to conceal her marriage by telling them that she and her husband were “good friends”.

Interviewed again, Smor-thit said the marriage lasted only two days.

She said she had kicked her husband out because he was taking drugs.

In September 2007, she admitted dishonesty, saying Mr Smorthit disappeared for days and did not provide for the family.

She said she was sick of being unable to answer the door because she feared discovery.

In mitigation, Smorthit’s barrister, Jayne Beckett, argued her client had resorted to a short-sighted and stupid way to support her children in a chaotic relationship.

She said: “In every other respect she has lived her life as a respectable and responsible mother. The very shame-faced, and now completely clean and sober, Mark Smorthit is in court.”

Smorthit later moved to Hull and now lives in Halifax, the court was told.