Benefit cheat who faked 11 children is spared prison

Lisa Watson, 28, was only 24 when she invented names and birthdays for her invented children to make the false benefits claims. Their ages ranged from one to 13 - including some whose faked dates of birth meant they would have been born only days apart.

Watson also forged a bank statement in an attempt to mislead the court into believing she was regularly paying back the money.

When she appeared at Dingwall Sheriff Court yesterday, Sheriff Bill Taylor sentenced her to two years' probation and ordered her to carry out 200 hours' community service.

Watson told officials at HM Revenue and Customs that she had 11 children in an effort to claim extra benefits. However, she did not claim benefits for her real offspring.

She admitted making fraudulent claims to obtain working tax credits and child tax credits between July 2006 and May 2007, when she was the mother of only one child.

Watson, who now has a second child, received a total of 16,787 she was not entitled to.

The court heard she had told HMRC that some of the fictitious children - whom she had even given proper names - were born only days or months apart.

She also admitted claiming to work for Manpower plc between November 2006 and January 2007, although her employment had ended in May2006.

The case had continued over two years to allow Watson to make regular repayments.

However, last month when she appeared before Sheriff David Sutherland she admitted lying about the payments.

The sheriff had not believed her claims in court, so he ordered a police investigation into the repayments. His suspicion came about when Watson's then solicitor, Diane McFarlane, withdrew from representing her client over the authenticity of information provided by her.

Watson admitted attempting to pervert justice by uttering as genuine to her lawyer a forged bank statement. It falsely showed payments she claimed she had made between 9 May, 2010, and 9 August, 2010.

She admitted that this was done with the intention of misleading the court into accepting she had repaid more than she actually had.

The case has been put off on numerous occasions to allow Watson the chance to prove she was repaying the money on a regular basis. It was on this issue that her latest lawyer, Diane McFarlane, withdrew from representing her.

During a previous appearance, Sheriff Sutherland told Watson: "I must say this is one of the worst frauds I have come across in the benefit system.

"It is appalling how one can claim to have this number of children when they don't. It was something you did knowingly."A previous court hearing had also heard she had used winning horseracing bets to repay 2,000 of the money she had falsely claimed.

Watson refused to comment on leaving court.