8:30am Wednesday 8th August 2007
By Caron Kemp
This week it came to light that a nurse from Bounds Green had falsely claimed more than £21,000 in benefits from Haringey Council.
Since taking up a full-time post at Barnet Hospital in September 2003, Adjoa Leona Anim-Otchere, 38, of Maidstone Road had managed to claim £10,856 in income support, £8,444 in housing benefit and
£1,744 in council tax benefit - all of which she was not entitled to.
She should have told the council she was employed. She did not. Instead the innocent tax payer funded her extravagences until she was caught and sentenced last month.
And what does she get for her efforts? 140 measly hours of community service.
We all knew that the law was, well, a law unto itself at times but come on... that's more than many people's yearly salary and her punishment is what plenty of well-meaning citizens do as a volunteer
without a second thought.
What kind of message does it send to the rest of us?
It wasn't so long ago (a mere two weeks to be precise) that a similar case came to light, where David Ogunwole and his wife Titilayo of Spencer Road, Tottenham went to court after fraudulently
claiming more than £20,000 in housing benefits over a three-and-a-half year period.
They didn't tell Haringey Council that their two-year-old son had died and went on to collect the money to which they were not entitled.
He was jailed for a year and she was given a 12 month jail sentence suspended for two years.
I can't help thinking what would have happened if more than £20,000 was stolen from a bank/ a person/ a shop or any group other than the poor tax payer.
Once again we see that there are little benefits for them.
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