A 54-year-old man has received a suspended sentence after admitting a £33,747 benefit fraud.
Richard Needham, of The Curraghs, Ballaugh, pleaded guilty to seven counts of making false representation to obtain a benefit.
He was sentenced to 16 weeks’ custody for each offence, to run concurrently, but suspended for two years.
He was also ordered to pay back £32,247, as he has already paid back £1,500.
The court heard how Needham had been in receipt of benefits between April 2011 and March 2015.
But he had been working on a subcontractor basis for John Barron Limited, a painting and decorating company.
In August 2015 Needham was quizzed about the work and handed in a prepared statement. In it he said that for the last six years he had suffered from mental health problems.
He said he had suffered a breakdown in 2011 and not done physical work since then but added that work had been done through third parties and that he had passed work on to people. He said that he would have paid tax on money he had not received and had not set out to act in a dishonest fashion when claiming benefits.
Defence advocate Steve Wood said in court: ‘The amount is high and we can’t get around that. Who can say when mental illness has struck? It may have started when my client was serving in the army. Maybe when he suffered personal losses. In January 2011 he went to a 21st birthday party and it brought back the loss of his own daughter.
‘But mental illness has struck and clouded his judgement. My submission is that the mental illness as described by the doctor in his report coincides with the offending.
‘My client has taken something of a pragmatic approach accepting responsibility, but he was not thinking as he usually would do. He was not faking he was genuinely ill and been providing regular medical evidence. Illness forced him to take a back seat. He accepts he employed two painters and decorators to undertake the work while he was unable to.
‘The tax office notified the department because he was straight up about his tax returns. His level of culpability is less than in some other cases. He’s not going to reoffend, he’s not going to be before the courts again.’
Chair of the magistrates bench John Hellowell said while passing sentence: ‘A fraud on the taxpayer over three years of £33,000. At that level only custody is appropriate. On balance we believe there are grounds to suspend the sentence. At the time you were suffering from mental illness.’