Linked: Fish in a barrel – evidence on social media sends claimant to prison

This is just stupid. I’ll let Chris Dale explain:

“Elder’s claim to a much larger sum was undermined in part by old-fashioned surveillance, which showed that she went shopping and walked her dog without a stick. The main evidence against her (or, at least, the part which won most attention) was that social media photographs showed that she had “fully participated” in her daughter’s hen party in Ibiza, a party she said she had been unable to attend.

This did more than lose her the extravagant amount of her claim. The judge said:

This was deliberate and persistent making of false statements for the purpose of falsely recovering significant monies from a publicly-funded body.

…and sentenced her to five months in prison.”

I have no idea what she did or didn’t know about the social media posts. Maybe someone else made them and she didn’t know she was tagged in them or something silly like that. Or maybe she was just ignorant to the fact that if she made these kinds of claims, the government would try to verify them

Then again, she had a legitimate claim, the NHS even agreed to that fact, and she tried to further lie about her situation in some sort of get rich quick scheme, so she may not be the brightest bulb out there, and if we fall back on Occam’s Razor, that may be all the explanation we need.

Fish in a barrel – evidence on social media sends claimant to prison

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