Couple jailed over $156,000 welfare frauds

Ten years of social welfare frauds totalling $156,000 have earned jail sentences for a Christchurch couple.

Elizabeth Cheryl McMillan, 56, and Bruce James McKenzie, 60, were today jailed for 16 months and seven months respectively for what Christchurch District Court Judge Brian Callaghan described as significant offending over a substantial period.

McMillan had pleaded guilty to using a Social Welfare Department form to continue getting the domestic purposes benefit, and McKenzie admitted misleading the department for three years so that he would continue receiving the sickness benefit.

Both admitted failing to tell the department they were in a relationship akin to marriage so that McMillan could continue to get her benefit, disability allowance, accommodation supplement, special needs grant and benefit advances.

McMillan and McKenzie had been due to stand trial on a raft of charges but pleaded guilty before depositions after the charges were amalgamated.

The court was told earlier that McMillan applied for the benefit after separating from her husband in 1979. She repeatedly filled in yearly review forms stating she was single and not living in a relationship.

In July 2001, the department received information that she was living with McKenzie and searched her property. Evidence showed the pair had been living together as a couple since February 1979.

McKenzie, the court was told, had received the unemployment benefit and accommodation benefit, and later the sickness benefit.

In 2001, the department learnt he was living with McMillan and had been self-employed as a drainlayer while receiving the benefit from 1991 to 1994.

McMillan was overpaid $133,920 and McKenzie had been overpaid $22,550.

Crown prosecutor Rosemary Roberts said the Social Welfare Department was being repaid from McMillan's and McKenzie's benefits, but in McMillan's case the amount was so large it was unlikely it could ever be recovered.

McKenzie was a party to McMillan's offending and had to carry some responsibility for the income they both received from fraudulent activity.

For McMillan, lawyer Serina Bailey said McKenzie's alcoholism was a "huge problem" for McMillan, who offered little support to the on-again, off-again relationship either financially or emotionally.

The amount involved was "an impossible mission" for repayment. She urged Judge Callaghan to defer an inevitable prison sentence to allow McMillan, who had significant health problems, to apply for home detention.

Lawyer Michael Starling acknowledged McKenzie had offered little to the relationship and was "more a drain on the family" through his drinking. He sought a community-based sentence rather than jail.

Judge Callaghan said many people lived in the community under constrained circumstances without defrauding social welfare "to get by".

He noted the pair were still living together and granted them leave to apply for home detention, but he refused to defer the sentences until they made their applications.

- NZPA