Benefit cheat Brian Riley - who led a 'life of Riley' on an island paradise after falsely claiming £70,000 - has been jailed for 12 months after failing to pay back his ill-gotten gains.
Riley was jailed by magistrates on Wednesday after defaulting on a repayment order and the court heard there was no evidence to show he has tried to sell his Sri Lankan home to pay back the money he fleeced.
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| Punished: Benefit cheat Brian Riley who has been jailed for 12 months after defaulting on a repayment order |
The 60-year-old was jailed for eight months in November 2008 after claiming income support, council tax benefit and disability allowance for more than three years by pretending he was living in a two-up, two-down terrace house Bradford, West Yorks. when he was actually living in Sri Lanka.
He actually sold his house in England, and did not declare the money.
Earlier this month Riley, whose total benefit from wrongdoing was a hefty £77,279, sought to vary a £30,000 six-month confiscation order, imposed in May last year, on the grounds it was too high - but the bid was thrown out at Bradford Crown Court.
Prosecutor Chloe Fairley told magistrates at Leeds, West Yorks., on Wednesday there was no hard evidence to show Riley had tried to sell his Sri Lankan home, which he needed to do in order to pay back the balance of money owed, around £20,000.
Stephen Winehouse, representing Riley, told the court no valuation of the house in Sri Lanka had been carried out and the confiscation order had been calculated on the basis of how much had been invested in the property, not how much it was worth.
He showed the bench a letter from Riley's wife, detailing efforts to sell the property, and asked them to adjourn the matter so his client could lodge an appeal against the confiscation order.
But bench chairman Graham Foster told Riley: 'At the end of the day this was originally £77,000. It's carried on for about 15 months now.
'The decision today is to activate the default sentence which is 360 days.'
Riley began claiming benefits legitimately in 2001 after heart surgery left him unable to work full time.
He first went to Sri Lanka as a charity volunteer after the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 and married a local woman.
When Riley was jailed in 2008, a spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions fraud team said: 'This man thought he could live a life of Riley at the taxpayers' expense. He was wrong.'
Riley told the court he had not been living an extravagant lifestyle, but Judge Robin Scott told him: 'Ninety-nine point nine per cent of the population of the UK would regard a house in the idyllic island of Sri Lanka as being an unnecessary luxury.'
After Wednesday's hearing, a DWP spokesman said: 'As this case shows, if you commit benefit theft you have to pay back the money taken, and you face imprisonment and a criminal record.'
© Daily Mail, London |
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