{"id":3506,"date":"2008-12-10T17:38:30","date_gmt":"2008-12-10T17:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tat.reddaisytrading.co.uk\/index.php\/2008\/12\/10\/mother-son-guilty-of-benefit-scam\/"},"modified":"2008-12-10T17:38:30","modified_gmt":"2008-12-10T17:38:30","slug":"mother-son-guilty-of-benefit-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/2008\/12\/10\/mother-son-guilty-of-benefit-scam\/","title":{"rendered":"Mother, son guilty of benefit scam"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3>City Council clamp down on benefit cheats<\/h3>\n<div><strong>A MOTHER and her son have been sentenced after they pleaded guilty to cheating the benefit system.<\/strong> <\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>Zarda Begum, 71, and her son, Zulficar Ali, 38, from Edgbaston pleaded guilty to falsely claiming more than \u00a322,000 in housing benefit over a nine year period.<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>Birmingham Crown Court was told Begum made false housing benefit claims for a property in Twyning Road, Edgbaston. She failed to declare that her landlord was in fact her son and over a nine year period she received \u00a322,938 in Housing Benefit to which she was not entitled.<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>She pleaded guilty to two offences while her son pleaded guilty to three offences under the Social Security Administration Act.\u00a0<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>Begum was given a 3 month prison sentence suspended for 2 years and her son was given a 6 month prison sentence suspended for 2 years.<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>Costs of \u00a31500\u00a0were\u00a0also\u00a0awarded\u00a0to\u00a0Birmingham\u00a0City Council and the overpaid benefit had been repaid in full prior to sentencing.<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>Jim Wilkinson, Assistant Director for Audit and Risk Management said the council would continue to squeeze out benefit cheats. <\/div>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<div>He said: \u201cBenefit fraudsters can be cautioned, fined or even sent to prison.\u00a0In all cases\u00a0the\u00a0money\u00a0has\u00a0to\u00a0be\u00a0paid\u00a0back\u00a0and\u00a0in\u00a0some cases property is confiscated.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cBirmingham City Council has taken successful legal action against 318 fraudsters since April this year\u201d.<\/div>\n<p>&#13;\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>City Council clamp down on benefit cheats A MOTHER and her son have been sentenced after they pleaded guilty to cheating the benefit system. &#13; Zarda Begum, 71, and her son, Zulficar Ali, 38, from Edgbaston pleaded guilty to falsely claiming more than \u00a322,000 in housing benefit over a nine year period. &#13; Birmingham Crown [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theasiantoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}