Yahoo Finance Unbelievable way $70k Centrelink fraudster was caught
A woman who fraudulently claimed more than $70,000 in Centrelink payments has been sentenced to two years’ jail.
The 55-year-old Melbourne woman Kimberley Castles claimed the sum over six years in the form of the single disability support pension.
However, Castles had at the same time been appearing on television and in magazines to talk about her successful conception with her partner, The Australian reported.
The woman claimed the payments over six years in what was a “brazen and audacious” rort, Judge Trevor Wraight said, with her picking up between $1,479 and $1,882 a fortnight.
The court heard she and her partner lived at the same address, had joint car insurances and several joint home loan, bank and personal loan accounts.
Judge Wraight said she had failed to think of how her actions place pressure on the social security system “which is designed for people in need”.
Castles’ lawyers said her relationship was violent and dysfunctional, and that her partner had a gambling problem, although the Judge rejected this claim.
The Judge also noted that Castles had been on a good behaviour agreement after previously defrauding Centrelink in 2009, when she began defrauding Centrelink again.
Castles isn’t the first person to try to defraud Centrelink: in the year to July 2018, some 26,346 Australians attempted to claim bigger Centrelink payments by falsely claiming to be single, leading to overpayments of $61 million.
And in 2019, a NSW man pleaded guilty to lying to Centrelink after receiving $66,762 in payments when he was only eligible for $21,507.
He had told Centrelink 73 times that he didn’t earn anything, and was ultimately forced to pay the money back.
However, that’s a small portion of the 3.5 million social security and welfare claims Centrelink received in the 2018-19 year.
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