A BENEFIT fraudster who cheated the taxpayer and vulnerable people out of nearly £150,000 by impersonating her stepmother has been jailed.

Denise Fitzpatrick, prosecuting, said Eliza Assaly, 39, used fake landlord details and a forged tenancy agreement during years of deceit involving three different benefits.

The stepmother had made a genuine claim, but after she left the UK to live abroad, Assaly continued the claim under her relative’s name and as benefits were paid into her stepmother’s bank account transferred them into her own account.

She also used her stepmother’s bank card when her relative was out of the country.

She continued fraudulently claiming pension credit, housing benefit and attendance allowance for five years before the deceit was discovered.

Her barrister Susannah Proctor said she had had financial problems because she had run up debts paying privately for artificial fertilisation and dental treatment and had needed money.

She urged for the prison sentence to be suspended, saying Assaly, who earned £42,000 a year, was 22 weeks’ pregnant through her third cycle of artificial fertilisation and didn’t want to give birth behind bars.

Assaly cried as she was jailed for 15 months.  

“This kind of fraud takes money away from the vulnerable,” the Recorder of York, Judge Sean Morris, told her.

“There are people far worse off than you who need sustenance from the state, elderly people living at home who need money for food. Those who take money in this way are depriving their fellow citizens of other benefits.”

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Assaly, of Hookstone Way, Harrogate, could also lose her home as the Government has started asset confiscation proceedings to regain as much of the money she stole as possible, York Crown Court heard.

She pleaded guilty to seven charges of fraud and one of having a forged document for use in fraud.

Ms Fitzpatrick said in total Assaly received £146,896.10 she was not entitled to, consisting of £60,358.30 in pension credit, £60,673.09 in housing benefit for a property in London and £3,037.76 for her Harrogate home and £22,825.95 in attendance allowance.  

The housing benefit should have been paid directly to her landlord, but Assaly provided her husband’s phone number for the London “landlord” and a fake tenancy agreement for her and her husband’s Harrogate property on which they have a mortgage.

During the fraud, which took place between September 2017, when the stepmother first moved abroad, and 2022, when it was discovered, the stepmother was in the UK on four occasions, catching flights three times to Iran and once to Moscow. 

None of her visits to the UK co-incided with when Assaly signed benefit claim documents in her name or impersonated her over the phone to the Benefit Agency.

Ms Proctor said the fraud was not sophisticated, but the judge said it was not unsophisticated.

The defence barrister said Assaly was now a different person than she was at the time of the fraud. She was “hugely remorseful” and all her salary was going in repaying her debts.  Her husband, a gas engineer was paying their household bills.