Crooked ex-PC fiddled £10,000 benefits

Apr 4 2007 By Justine Halifax, Birmingham Mail

A CROOKED ex-policeman claimed more than £10,000 in benefits while he worked as a medic.

Former Staffordshire Police constable Cedric Newens pocketed incapacity benefit as he worked for St John's Ambulance and a company called Wallace Cameron.

Newens, 58, of Cemetery Road, Cannock, even used his wife's national insurance numbers on his weekly time sheets to avoid detection.

But he was rumbled after someone anonymously tipped off the Benefit Fraud Hotline.

Newens had pleaded guilty to claiming incapacity benefit while working at an earlier hearing at Cannock Magistrates' Court.

He was yesterday sentenced to serve 160 hours' of unpaid work for the community.

Commenting on the case James Plaskitt, the anti-benefit fraud minister for the Department of Work and Pensions, said: "No-one can go plodding on committing benefit fraud and expect to get away with it.

"There is no excuse for committing benefit fraud. We will always investigate and take appropriate action where fraud is discovered."

Newens had claimed to be unable to work because he was suffering from a bad back for six years from October 1994 to April 2000.

He then began to work for St John's Ambulance as a trainer assessor and in 2005 started to provide first aid training for the service.

But he lied when he claimed he would not be employed on a permanent basis but "as and when" on odd days.

Following a fraud investigation it was also discovered Newens had been working for Wallace Cameron since October, 2003.

In total he claimed £10,866 in benefits to which he was not entitled.