$200,000 in benefits gained with false IDs

Jeanette Geraldine Ford. Photo / Doug Sherring.

An unemployed woman has admitted using fraudulent and forged documents, including driving licences and birth certificates, to illegally obtain more than $200,000 in benefits.

Jeanette Geraldine Ford, 49, has also admitted stealing aliases from Kiwis living overseas during the 13 years she was deceiving Work and Income New Zealand.

The Weekend Herald can also reveal that Ford is a repeat offender and was sentenced to a community work term in 2007 for forging $1250 of invoices for reimbursement from a charity she was managing.

Ford, who lives in upmarket St Heliers, used her name and six aliases to apply for $231,204.11 in sickness and domestic purposes benefits, accommodation supplements and other payouts between 1996 and 1999.

She was paid $128,358.76 under the name Jeanette Geraldine Hartley, $63,464.61 as Jenette Christina Ford, $33,083.05 as Kathleen Eddington and $6297.69 under the name Kim Sharee Watt.

She also used the names Virginia Jane Morrison and Bridgette Beswick.

Eddington, Morrison and Watt were stolen identities.

Ford used her fake identities in Winz offices across Auckland and Hamilton and was caught during Ministry of Social Development "information mining" - the process of extracting hidden patterns from data.

The link between the aliases is understood to have been picked up through improvements in technology.

Once the link was made, the ministry worked with police and other agencies, including the Department of Internal Affairs and the Transport Agency, to gather the evidence that led to Ford's arrest.

The ministry could not comment yesterday as the case was still before the courts. However, when Ford was first charged in 2009, the ministry's head of integrity services, Hilary Reynolds, said: "It is a unique case involving deliberate deception to steal and create identities for gain."

This week, Ford admitted seven charges of using a document to obtain a pecuniary advantage, 20 of dishonestly using a document, six of obtaining by deception and three of using forged documents.

She faces a maximum of 10 years' jail and will be sentenced on Monday in the Auckland District Court.

In 2007, Ford also appeared before the courts after she defrauded the North Shore Women's Refuge.

She pleaded guilty to four charges of forgery after submitting $1250 worth of invoices for reimbursement from the trust that supported the refuge. Ford was sentenced to 1000 hours' community work.