‘Disabled’ man’s £12,500 fraud

Mar 18 2010 by David Powell, North Wales Weekly News

‘Disabled’ man’s £12,500 fraud

A MAN who once claimed he had an incurable back problem was secretly filmed walking his dog at a beauty spot, a court last week.

Robert Moult, 59, had slipped three discs over the years and dishonestly claimed £12,500 in Disability Living Allowance (DLA), Llandudno Magistrates heard.

An informer had tipped off the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) benefit fraud investigators about Moult in 2007.

The investigators parked near his Penrhyn Bay home and from their car secretly filmed him on 10 occasions between December 2007 and January 2008.

Prosecutor Matthew Curtis was told by DWP investigator Phil Williams that although Moult claimed he could only walk 50 yards in “two to five minutes”, Moult was filmed near the Little Orme walking 270 yards in two minutes 15 seconds.

Phil Williams said: “He was walking freely, at a steady pace, with no walking aids and no sign of a limp.”

Moult, a former Rumbelows electrical shop manager in Llandudno, had said he had slipped a disc lifting washing machines, aged 24, and did it twice more.

Doctors told him his spinal problems were incurable but the pain got so bad he opted for spinal fusion surgery in 2001 which gradually eased his back problems.

The prosecutor said: “At no time did you pick up the phone or write a letter from 2001 to today to say ‘I have had an operation which has improved my condition slightly’.”

Moult was convicted of failing to notify the authorities that his condition had improved which would have affected his entitlement to disability living allowance.

Richard Williams, defending, said his client, of Penrhyn Beach West, Penrhyn Bay, was also getting incapacity benefit and he notified incapacity benefit staff in a 2007 questionnaire and on other forms about his operation and improvement and had a “reasonable expectation” they would share that information with their DWP colleagues administering DLA.

Moult has repaid the £12,577.95 in overpaid disability living allowance.

Moult, whose case was adjourned until March 24 for a pre-sentence report, was granted unconditional bail.