Benefit received under two names

Press, 23 May 1989, Page 6

Benefit received under two names

A woman, aged 68, was overpaid nearly $42,000 while receiving an invalid’s benefit under two names, the District Court was told yesterday. The woman, whose name was suppressed in the interim,“ pleaded guilty to a charge brought by the Social Welfare Department, and was remanded at large by Judge Holderness to June 12 for probation and reparation reports and sentence. Mr John Sandston, for the department, told the Court that the woman had been granted an invalid’s benefit from the department’s Christchurch office in December, 1979, then

; was granted a second I benefit, under another name, from the Porirua i office in April, 1981. The double payment was discovered in Novem- : ber last year by which time she had been overpaid $41,917.86, he said. Mr John Callaghan, for the defendant, said she had good reason to assume the false name when she first approached the Porirua office, as she did not want her de facto husband to track her down, having suffered a fractured jaw in a serious assault. She since returned to Christchurch to help care for the de facto husband’s retarded son.