Evri delivery driver who falsely claimed £235,000 in benefits saying he couldn’t bend over or walk more than 20 metres is jailed for three years
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15042343/evri-delivery-driver-benefit-fraud-jailed.html
by cennep44
32 comments
>An Evri delivery driver who falsely claimed almost a quarter of a million pounds in benefits by claiming he couldn’t bend over has been jailed.
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>Paul Churchman told the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) he could barely walk without being in ‘agonising pain’, and chalked up £235,000 of benefits alongside his wife Gemma, whom he roped into the scam.
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>But Maidstone Crown Court heard that he was hauling parcels as a self-employed courier with Evri, formerly Hermes, at the same time – for which he was paid £403,000 over 11 years, or £36,000 a year.
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>Between January 2013 and January 2024 Churchman and his wife received £105,786 of housing benefit, £45,411 of income support and £38,404 in Personal Independence Payment (PIP).
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>They also claimed £24,562 of Universal Credit, £9,589 in Jobseekers’ Allowance and £8,081 in Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), and received a council tax reduction of £3,340.
Our benefits system is a complete joke. Why is there not a doctor’s confirmation that this is the case?
Well that one evri delivery driver… Not sure why the rest are not up to scratch
Was the verdict delivered to him by lobbing it over a neighbours fence?
How did they prove he could bend over? Most EVRI drivers just drop or punt your package without bending and they never walk more than the length of your driveway.
3 years is not enough. It needs to be for the length of the scam minimum.
You’re saying somebody lied on their PIP assessment and faked a bad back? But loads of redditors assured us that such a thing was literally impossible?!
I don’t actually think PIP fraud is that rampant, not like UC, but I *do* take glee in evidence that what everybody sane knew could occur does when so many people were trying to convince us against all reason that it doesn’t.
Paul Churchman.
I guess the anti immigrants brigade will not be flooding this post.
Is there no link between the benefits system and HMRC? I assumed an NI number would track both benefits and income.
Couldn’t they have waited to arrest him until AFTER my eBay order arrived?
How did he dropkick parcels into people’s hedges, per Evri policy, if he was unable to walk, eh?
Dont get me wrong. The asylum system needs a massive overhaul. But when will people realise these are the type of people raping the country. Not some bloke on a dingy.
They should bring back public shaming for it. Lock them in the stocks for a couple of days in their local town center.
This is a little misleading.
The claim he couldn’t bend over and struggled to walk more than 20 metres without pain was one of the representations he made when he claimed PIP of £38,000 and contributed towards getting it. It is unlikely to be the only one and the article does not claim his injury did not exist at all and the suggestion seems to be he exaggerated the support he needed at home.
The bigger fraud was that he (and his wife) claimed the other £200,000 in housing, income support and other benefits, all of which are means tested, despite him working. This would have required deliberate fraud to avoid the regular checks the DWP do and some very dodgy accounting.
Lets not make this an attack on disability benefits or PIP, it’s mostly just standard financial fraud.
“falsely claimed £235,000 in benefits”
“To date, the 49-year-old and his wife, 42, have repaid just £3,500, with a payment plan set up at the rate of £250 a month.”
I hope interest is being applied.
Because £235,000 in the bank at 4.5% savings interest is £10,575 per year.
They’re only repaying £3000 a year. They could still be making a tidy profit if they haven’t spent it all.
Not that it will make much difference unless they actually die with assets. At that repayment rate, it will take 78 years to clear the capital.
And yet my brother is having to appeal the decision to remove his PIP. They seem to think the bones scooped out of his ears have probably grown back.
£250 a month payment plan will take 78 years to pay off. Don’t have assets to sell to recover the bulk? This man still had a decent paying job so is not entirely destitute.
I was working for DSS in 1980s.
The fact is, GP validation was diminished in value years ago – specifically because they were validating nearly 100% of applicants (GPs are nothing if not nice to their patients).
The idea if using the DSSs own (or 3rd party) assessments WAS SPECIFICALLY TO REDUCE SUCCESSFUL APPLICANTS
How long was he getting Benefits to get such a large amount of money?
Meanwhile my dad who worked his whole life, barely ever missing a day off work, is at 65 with a COP lung condition to the point where he can’t stand for more than a minute or so. He’s been refused all PIP multiple times.
Lovely country we live in.
But it’ll take 4 years for him to get delivered to the wrong jail.
Billions disappear to Tory chums for PPE not fit for purpose, meanwhile I see the hate on here for a benefit fraudster caught.
3 years for him so how many decades for these Tory chums?
You carry on hating the krill whilst the whales fleece the UK state.
Good, now do the same for literal millions of others because they’re out there
And he paid the £235,000 back into the system right?
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Right?!?
It’s that 0% fraud rate we keep hearing about again.
The one thing that annoys me about it all is yes the fraud but also that PIP isn’t an out of work benefit. Thousands of disabled people get PIP and work. I know this bloke was pulling a fast one but that was mostly in UC fraud.
I never understand how people manage to fraud the benefit system. My own experience after having a heart attack was that they treated me like dirt despite hospital letters and GP letters and then the exam I was put through was boiled down to “Lift your arms up” and “Now put your arms in front of you” yes, benefits denied, you can work fine. Forget about the endless amount of medication I was on and the need for recovery. So it always blows my mind when stories come out about people who manage to wrangle thousands and hundreds of thousands out of them.
How does our system not detect that?
This has been going on for 11 years? Where’s the checking of bank/credit cards or HMRC notifications
How tf do u get £255, 000 in benefits? What is the government offering I am not aware of?
A Briton who defrauds the state for 200k gets less time than foreigner rapists.
Make it make sense.
People like this make everyone look in need look bad. Whenever there’s money to be had there’s always a grifter. Look at the covid payouts the grifters just had to pay the tory party a bit of money and they got millions!
Ordered some clothing last week from Wierd Fish, economy evri delivery to the extent that Evri never even acknowledged reciept of order. Refunded Tuesday, new order shipped RM recieved yesterday to NI. They (Evri) really are shit.
As someone on benefits, I get barely enough to survive each month and that’s as it should be. How people like this manage to claim so much is totally beyond me.
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