A MOTHER and daughter who swindled more than £600,000 in benefits have been ordered to pay it all back.

Enid Bell, 67, and Lorraine Bell, 30, bought eight houses and a fleet of luxury cars with the fortune they fiddled from the taxpayer.

Among the cars bought by the pair from Whalley Range, Manchester, was a high-powered Audi TT with the personalised registration plate LOZZIE B, owned by mother-of-two Lorraine.

Her mother, who masterminded the 12-year scam, used at least eight different identities and addresses to make bogus benefit claims.

Separate bank accounts were set up to make it difficult for payments to be traced back to her. Her daughter was described as her ‘right hand man.’

Enid Bell was jailed for four-and-a-half years and her daughter for two years and three months after they both admitted conspiracy to defraud.

Complex

Now a confiscation hearing has ordered them to repay every penny.

Bell was the mastermind behind the family scam, while daughter Lorraine, 30, was her ‘right hand’ in the well organised and complex fraud.

The money, huge amounts of cash the two conned from the Department of Work and Pensions and local councils, allowed them to buy eight houses, along with prestige cars and other luxuries.

Enid Bell, who admitted conspiracy to defraud at Preston Crown Court last June, used at least eight identities and different addresses to make bogus benefit claims. Separate bank accounts had been set up to make it difficult for payments to be traced back to her.

Lorraine was said to have played a ‘significant and essential’ role in helping her mother, mainly by filling in forms for her.

The pair, who both lived in Whalley Range, cheated the system of more than £600,000 in total, but at a confiscation hearing this week at Burnley Crown Court, were ordered to repay everything.

Assets

Enid, of Stanley Road, who sat in a wheelchair throughout the sentencing hearing last June, has been ordered to repay £347,400. The hearing at Burnley ordered that £82,400 should be taken from frozen bank accounts, and the balance of £265,000 from the sale of properties and assets.

Lorraine, of Withington Road, was ordered to pay back £265,075 – £49,000 of it instantly, and the remaining £216,000 from property and assets. A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensioners said: “This confiscation hearing illustrates the serious consequences of committing benefit fraud.

“Not only have the Bells received heavy prison sentences, the Department has now sought full reimbursement of all money fraudulently obtained, to ensure that fraudsters do not benefit financially from their criminal activities.”

Jamaican-born Enid, who is still serving her sentence, was told by Judge Beverley Lunt during the court case at Preston: “You are a thoroughly dishonest and greedy person. Deception is second nature to you.

“That you were able to steal from the taxpayer money for 12 years to a tune of well over half a million pounds is a matter of grave concern. More so is that this was money intended to help vulnerable people in genuine need and distress.”

Fraud investigators painstakingly built up a case against the two women during a lengthy investigation called Operation Negator.

Illnesses

Each of the identities used by Enid had a number of benefit claims made against them, including income support, Disability Living Allowance, pension credits, housing benefits and council tax benefit.

At the height of the con, she used the name Edna Davis to make claims for income support, pension credit, disability living allowance, DLA housing benefit and council tax benefit to the tune of £106,000. She also made claims under the name of Edna Joyce Coley for £109,000; Joyce Simms £106,000; Elmay Joyce Rose Simms £58,000; Cynthia Bell £58,000; Maureen Simms £56,000; Ester Rose Davis £29,000; and Margaret Smith £23,000.

Bell was said to suffer from a number of genuine illnesses and ailments including hypertension, angina, blackouts and claustrophobia, but had calmly and methodically continued to defraud the DWP and other agencies by making fictitious claims.

She had been jailed for nine months for an earlier benefit fraud in 1995 – and then started up her dishonest enterprise again the day after being released.

The investigation which uncovered the complex and tangled web of deceit spun by Enid was triggered by the then-pregnant daughter Lorraine when she told hospital staff her name was Maureen Simms and for reasons still unknown, told nursing staff during hospital visit, that she had been raped.

Concerns were raised when midwifes were unable to trace her and tried to make home visits and were unable to make contact. And alarm bells began ringing when Enid then visited her in hospital, claiming firstly to be her auntie before telling staff she was actually her mother.

Angela Allen, who was the chief investigator on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions, said after the confiscation hearing: “What followed was virtually two years of blood, sweat and tears.

Slog

“There was some surveillance involved, but it was basically a hard slog paper exercise, trying to make sense of the fantastic scenario that was unravelling.

“We ended up having thousands of exhibits and pieces of material that had to be examined, not to mention literally scores of witnesses that had to be interviewed.

“I was stunned by the complexity of the whole situation. The bulk of the work was done after we had made the initial arrests.
It is undoubtedly one of the most satisfying cases we have had to deal with, not to mention one of the strangest.

“Enid Bell particularly when she sat in her wheelchair during the sentencing hearing, looked for all the world like an innocent church-going granny. In fact she was a very intelligent, shrewd and calculating woman, who was the absolute mastermind behind the whole operation.

“We never got to the bottom of how she so successfully managed to create so many different identities and got away with her cheating activities for so long.

“Enid in particular never really co-operated with us, and would scrutinise every bit of evidence we presented her with, before on most occasions, throwing it back at us, saying no comment.

“The whole thing was made worthwhile however, when mother and daughter were given prison sentences, and it was even better when they were both further penalised by what hurt them more than anything – having the results of their criminal activity taken away from them.”

Enid Bell’s husband George 71, was given a conditional discharge for three years, at Preston Crown Court, for making a false pension credit claim of £1,635, and her son Terence Simms 43, of Shrewsbury Street, Whalley Range, was given a 30-week sentence suspended for two years, for falsely claiming Jobseeker’s allowance of £8,400 over a period of four years.