An elderly brother and sister with a £4 million property empire between them have been accused of pocketing £130,000 in housing benefits.
Raymond Martin, 72 claimed to be the tenant of his sister, Shefali Scholefield, 67 in the 15-year fraud, Blackfriars Crown Court heard.
The Indian-born siblings, who are both disabled, represented themselves at the trial, charged with having deliberately kept valuable properties in London and Surrey from their local authority.
Mr Martin told housing chiefs he was blind, living alone in a Holloway flat that the siblings jointly owned and in need of cash handouts. His sister supported the claims by writing bogus correspondence notifying him of rental increases and complaining if he ever fell behind with payments.
Mrs Scholefield owned a £3.5 million detached house in Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, at the time, whilst claiming £30,000 in housing benefits, saying she lived at another property she owned in Great Ormond Street, West London.
David Baird, prosecuting, said the four-bedroom house in Kingston has stood vacant, while the pair received around £100,000 of taxpayers’ money until 2006.However, the plot was exposed when the London Borough of Kingston informed the council in Islington that Mrs Scholefield had an undeclared property.
During the hearing the pensioners sat where their lawyers would have been and were frequently caught chatting loudly to each other – reported the Daily Mail.
During the proceedings the pair were urged by Judge Peter Clarke QC to explain their position fully, he said: “Your case in part is that you made it quite clear to Islington that you were asking for mortgage payments, not rental payments.”
Although Mr Martin went on to agree that this was the case, the court then heard that his application clearly stated that he was a “private tenant”.
At one stage during the proceedings Mrs Scholefield interrupted: “There's a lot of letters and made up stories...I dispute most of it.”
Laughing, she added: “Somebody, not MI6, but somebody, wrote it.”
Mr Martin and Mrs Scholefield, both of Wood Green, North London, jointly deny 14 counts of false accounting between July 1991 and July 2006.
Mrs Scholefield further denies a further 14 like charges between December 1998 and February 2004.
The trial continues.
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