A married couple from Nottinghamshire has been convicted for making more than £17,000 from dozens of fraudulent insurance claims for supposed life-threatening illnesses.
David Sweetman, 53, and his wife Lesley, 48, pleaded guilty at Nottingham Magistrates Court and were sentenced to 40 weeks and eight weeks of imprisonment respectively. Both prison terms were suspended for two years.
According to the authorities, the Sweetmans started to submit claims to health insurer Simplyhealth in 2005. Both claimed spending long periods of time in hospital being treated for serious ailments.
Sweetman made claims for illnesses such as pre-haptic jaundice and ulceration colitis while his wife alleged that she was being treated for a stroke.
The couple used fake signatures on medical documents, which were authorised with a stamp that the fraudsters had designed on their computer.
Simplyhealth audited the Sweetmans in 2015 and discovered that 32 of their 34 claims were completely fraudulent.
“The couple claimed to have serious and potentially life threatening illnesses when in fact they were not in hospital at all,” said detective constable Mike Monkton of the City of London Police’s insurance fraud enforcement department.
“Their efforts to claim from their insurance company were calculated and this shows that they had every intention of making money out of crime,” Monkton added.
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