Bowden/King Saints and Scroungers

This programme tracks down thieves. It exposes fraudsters

and it brings help to those who really deserve it.

This is the frontline against benefit fraud.

This is Saints And Scroungers.

Saints And Scroungers is all about busting benefit thieves,

who steal millions every year, and the crack teams of investigators

determined to scupper their devious scams.

And we also shine a light on those who genuinely need the money,

and the people who help them get it. They are our saints.

The saints get help and the fraudsters get their comeuppance.

Coming up on today's show:

The titled lady and her boyfriend,

who posed as landlord and tenant to swindle the taxpayer

out of nearly £93,000.

There was clearly a relationship between them that was

more than just friends.

Darling Oriol, love Graham. Kiss, kiss, kiss.

OK. It's more than platonic, this, isn't it?

And we meet at the dedicated carer

who fell ill herself.

I couldn't help my nan. My nan couldn't help me.

It reached a stage where it was really unbearable for us.

But is a helping hand closer than she thinks?

If somebody said they were living in a posh place like this,

you wouldn't expect them to be claiming benefits, would you?

But scroungers come in every shape and size,

and even lords and ladies sometimes feel

they've got the right to dip their hand into the taxpayer's pot.

This is Graham Young...

..a 68-year-old man, claiming to be single

and living in rented accommodation in Fulham, south-west London.

He has no job and no savings and consequently is claiming benefits.

Now meet Lady Bowden.

She's the wealthy widow who owns the flat Graham Young is renting.

But it seems their relationship may not

be as straightforward as landlord and tenant.

In fact, Lady Bowden and Graham Young

are suspected of being a couple, who together,

are guilty of ripping off the benefit system,

to the tune of just under £93,000.

Mark Dalton is Investigations Manager

for Hammersmith and Fulham Council.

He's been in the job for 15 years,

and knows a thing or two about how to rumble a benefit cheat.

I joined him down on the river,

to check out the unlikely scene of this suspected crime.

-What have we got here, Mark?

-This is Carrara Wharf, Dom.

This is a very nice block of flats by the Thames here,

Putney Bridge, and this was the place

where Graham Young claimed housing benefits for years.

It was purchased by Lady Bowden in March 2004.

As far as des-res goes, slap bang on the Thames,

-this is a very nice one to land.

-Very nice indeed.

How did you discover what was going on?

We had a tip-off in the summer of 2008,

really came from the local police,

that there was an issue with somebody who lived on the estate here.

They suspected the person was claiming benefits,

and the person had a partner

who was financially sufficient to support that person.

It turns out one of Graham Young's neighbours

had blown the whistle on him.

It seems that over the past few years,

Young had brought a series of petty court actions against

the management company that ran the posh apartment block where he lived.

Roger Southam is chairman of the management company,

which now manages the property.

It was their job to sort out the mess Graham Young had created.

The reason for the court action was some fairly spurious

and fatuous claims he was making about damage to his car,

about parking space not being available for him,

about damage to his property.

He claimed he had plant pots moved, plant pots taken.

The whole myriad was just unbelievable

and in every case, the judge threw out the cases

and in every situation, costs were awarded against Young,

and each time he turned round to say

he couldn't afford the costs because he was on benefits,

so the poor leaseholder was suffering,

with money going on their service charge, and picking up the tab.

So Graham Young had firmly established himself

as the neighbour from hell.

But it was Mark Dalton and the fraud team's job

to find out whether he was also a benefit fraudster.

Mark Dalton speaking. Can I help?

In April 2008,

a full investigation was launched into Graham Young.

The first thing Mark needed to confirm was exactly what

benefits Young had been claiming, and for how long.

Council records showed Mr Young had received housing benefit

since May 2002, on the initial basis, of being on income support,

and then that had become pension credits

when he had reached his 60th birthday.

He was claiming income support based on being single,

out of work, with no income and no assets.

The Department For Work And Pensions are responsible

for administering income support,

so Mark contacted his opposite number at the DWP...

..Fraud Officer Monique Robbins.

Income support and pension credit

are means tested benefits.

The customer has to declare

any form of income, property,

capital, that they hold.

Monique was able to confirm that

because Graham Young was receiving pension credits,

he had also automatically qualified for council tax and housing benefit,

which had paid for his posh riverside pad,

owned, of course, by his equally posh landlady, Lady Bowden.

In March 2004 we received a letter from Lady Bowden,

confirming she was the new landlady,

asking whether we could commence the payment of

housing benefit into her bank account, which we did.

So far, everything is looking legit.

You've an unemployed, single man in his mid-60s, living alone,

who needs a little bit of help paying rent.

He gets a new landlady. She informs the Council

and the housing benefit is paid directly into her account.

But according to his disgruntled fellow residents,

Graham Young's new landlady, Lady Bowden,

is in fact, his girlfriend,

a little detail, which makes a big difference.

If Lady Bowden is Graham Young's girlfriend,

what's he actually guilty of?

Basically living together fraud.

Where somebody claims benefits and fails to declare

they're in a relationship, they have a partner

who should be included in the claim.

If that person was included in the claim, it would seriously

reduce or extinguish their entitlement to benefit.

Lady Bowden...sounds very hoity-toity...

what can you tell me about her background?

Her original name was Oriol Bath

and she was married to Frank Bowden,

which is where she gets the Lady from. She was widowed in 2001.

We believe she was wealthy in her own right before marrying Lord Bowden.

He, himself, was the grandson of the person

who built up the Raleigh cycle company.

-All right for a few quid, isn't she?

-She has considerable means, yes.

It sounds like Lady Bowden has got easily enough money for two,

but Mark still needed to prove, beyond a doubt,

that these two were a couple living together

and that she was supporting him while he claimed benefits.

What the team needed now

was to start digging for some hard evidence.

We started looking into their background, their finances,

to look for links between the two.

We were quite surprised at what we found.

Mark contacted the DWP and asked them

to take another look at Graham Young's claim form,

from when he first applied for income support back in 2002.

On it, they discovered he had declared

a tiny share in a small studio in Fulham,

but when they checked Land Registry to see

what else they could discover about the property,

they made an astonishing find.

The studio in Fulham was a unit,

single-storey unit,

size of a double garage,

owned initially by him, then sold to his father.

Subsequently,

that was given by Graham Young and his stepmother

to Oriol Bowden.

Hang on a minute. How many people do you know would give away

a valuable property in one of London's most well-to-do boroughs,

to their landlady? This case looked more suspicious by the second.

Mark sensed he was onto something

and decided to delve deeper into the land registry,

to see what other murky details would come to light.

The investigation uncovered that in 2003,

jointly, Lady Bowden and Graham Young

purchased a property in Ramsgate for £100,000,

without a mortgage.

And later we discovered in 2008

they had purchased another property in Ramsgate, again, jointly,

without a mortgage, for £36,000.

These transactions indicated their finances were wrapped up together,

in the same way you'd expect a well off man and wife

to have their finances wrapped up.

These house purchases recorded in the Land Registry,

seemed to show Graham Young was a man of property,

but when you looked a bit closer,

Mark noticed that there was something funny going on.

Within days of each house being bought,

Graham Young removed his name from the title deeds, so Lady Bowden

was left as the sole proprietor.

Clearly such an arrangement would

hide assets that Mr Young owned,

to allow him to claim any income-based benefits,

and to keep anybody that was chasing him

for any money he owed them, at bay.

It looked like Graham Young and Lady Bowden had thought of everything,

but what would happen when their double dealing

eventually caught up with them?

The first Lady Bowden and Graham Young

knew about being investigated for benefit fraud,

was when police knocked their door early one morning.

Next it's farewell to the scroungers and hello to the saints,

the innocent men and women in the UK in dire need of government help

and the people who show them the way to claim what they deserve.

When a family member becomes ill,

people often feel it's their duty to care for them,

which is fair enough.

But what happens when the stress becomes too much,

and the carer themselves actually starts to become unwell?

Kemille King is a single mother who's juggling bringing up

her three sons, working with youngsters in a Bristol hostel

and caring for her elderly nan when she fell ill.

My nan had a stroke in 1995,

which has left her paralysed on one side,

and partially blind on the other side,

so she just couldn't cope, it was hard for her to cope on her own.

12 years ago the whole family moved from Jamaica to England,

and went to live with Kemille's aunt

in her terraced house in Bristol.

I met Kemille to find out how she's been coping since then.

Am I right in saying that Jamaicans, particularly,

have a really good, loyal bond, with their families?

You come together and really look after each other?

As Jamaicans, we think our responsibility

is to look after our parents.

If it takes somebody to stop working

to look after Nan, that's what we'd have to do.

Giving up work to be a carer wasn't an option for Kemille.

Along with her aunt, she was the breadwinner of the household

and was doing over 70 hours a week as an assistant

at a shelter for the homeless.

My mum was working a lot.

She was working a lot, coming home,

having to do stuff for me and my brothers and my nan.

I thought she was like a superwoman, basically.

With Jowayne's help, Kemille was just about able

to keep her head above water but then one day, disaster struck.

Kemille was on her way to work when she slipped and fell,

injuring her back and shoulder.

Kemille was diagnosed with chronic regional pain syndrome.

She was given a morphine patch to wear 24 hours a day,

and, devastatingly, had to give up work.

I think, not going to work...

I started to think, "What is going to happen?"

The thinking became more stressful and more stressful became more pain

and I was on that cycle, downhill.

Kemille's aunt insisted that she go to the doctor,

who told her she was suffering from depression brought on

by the terrible pain and stress that she was under.

My GP knew that I was a main carer for my nan.

I came home with a leaflet but I was very reluctant to ring.

I didn't want to ring anybody for help.

The leaflet was for a publicly funded organisation

called Bristol Black Carers, who were set up specifically

to help carers in the black and Asian communities.

-So what did you do for Kemille?

-I think the initial thing

was looking at the housing.

That was the crucial part of what we had to do, because

she couldn't live in the conditions that she was living in.

It was true that a new home for Kemille and the boys

would transform all their lives, but, as usual,

Kemille was thinking of others first.

My nan is just like my blood in my vein.

So leaving her, taking the boys with me,

was a big thing for her as well as for myself.

It was now down to Hazel to find a solution to the nan problem

that would be acceptable to Kemille.

One of the free services that Bristol Black Carers provide

is to supply care attendants,

to give carers a break from their duties.

For the first couple of days, I went down to see how it went,

and she is having a fantastic time with that carer.

Now that Kemille could see for herself how happy her nan was,

she was ready to take more good advice from Hazel,

this time about benefits.

Kemille's health is actually deteriorating,

which is really quite worrying, so I've suggested to Kemille

that we apply for disability living allowance.

'In only a few months, Hazel had waved her magical wand

'over so much of Kemille's life, but she saved her best trick for last.'

How long did it take to get her a house?

With Bristol Black Carer support,

I think she got a house within seven to eight months.

How long could somebody be waiting if they didn't have your help?

A couple of years. It wouldn't surprise me.

This is a beautiful house. Have you done this garden?

Me and my sons have done it.

'I couldn't wait to see the difference the house made to Kemille

'so I went to check it out.'

You must feel like the cat who got the cream,

sitting in a house like this now?

I feel relaxed. More relaxed.

I feel that the boys have more space for their friends or whatever.

I feel fantastic.

You've moved on a little bit here.

You've got what you deserve and need.

What's happening with your nan?

I try to see her at least twice a week but if I don't,

because of how I feel,

I don't worry about her.

Although I'm here and she's there, she's OK.

On that note I will love you and leave you.

-All the best for the future.

-Thank you very much.

'Back now to the world of the scrounger,

'and the case against suspected benefit cheat, Graham Young,

'and his supposed landlady, Lady Bowden, is heating up.

'Hammersmith and Fulham Council has found evidence

'to suggest they're guilty of living together fraud.'

As we began to probe the finances

of both Lady Bowden and Graham Young,

it became clear their relationship

was other than what you'd expect from a landlord and a tenant.

'The investigation discovered that

'while posing as a single man scraping by on benefits,

'Graham Young and Lady Bowden had been building up

'an extensive property portfolio

'worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.'

So this poor, old, unemployed, single bloke

is actually now starting to look quite flush.

He's got a stake in three valuable properties

in London and the south-east,

but what about that rather nice apartment on the Thames,

where he's now living?

We discovered that in 2004, Lady Bowden purchased the property.

By 2008, Graham Young had moved out.

She was well aware of that because both of them were,

through different estate agents, trying to rent the property out

whilst he was still receiving housing benefit.

He was claiming rent from you

and they were sub-letting it out to get more rent.

Two slices of the cake?

Two rental incomes for the same property,

and one of them paid for by the taxpayer.

Just hold your horses for a second.

He is claiming housing benefit for a property he no longer lives at.

On top of that, him and Lady Bowden are trying to let the property

so they can pocket the rent and the housing benefit on top of that.

Cheeky monkeys!

'This was shaping up to be

'one of the council's biggest and most complex cases yet.

'All Graham Young's fraudulent benefit claims

'were based on the fact that he was a single man without income,

'so unless the team could prove once and for all he was in a relationship

'with a rich partner,

'the case against him and Lady Bowden would collapse.

'If they were going to catch this greedy pair red-handed,

'they needed to tread carefully.

'One of Mark's colleagues on the Hammersmith fraud team

'takes up the story.

'In his line of work, it pays to conceal your identity.'

Under the Social Security Act,

we have powers to get information

regarding the person's financial details

once we suspect a crime is being committed.

'The team got access to Lady Bowden

'and Graham Young's bank accounts and what they found was dynamite.

'It looked like she was bankrolling her boyfriend,

'dishing out large sums at regular intervals and all the while,

'he was claiming benefits

'as a single, unemployed pensioner with no income.

'That wasn't the half of it.

'They also found evidence of some very tasty trips abroad.'

Typically, what we saw was that they were travelling through Europe

in France, Holland, Belgium and also in the United States.

It's becoming increasingly clear that these two are together

and they're not short of a bob or two either.

They still continue to claim money from the system we pay taxes into.

Do these people have no shame?

'After years of getting away with it,

'Graham Young and Lady Bowden must have thought they'd fooled everyone.

'But even the most devious criminals will sometimes betray themselves.'

There was an insurance policy in the name of Oriol Bowden

that listed Graham Young as a second driver to her vehicle.

Where it asked what their relationship was,

she declared that he was her spouse.

'Gotcha!

'This was the vital piece of evidence the team were waiting for.

'It was time to bring the couple in.

'At this point, Lady Bowden was living at an address in Berkshire

'and on 28th January 2009,

'the police and Hammersmith and Fulham council

'swooped in a dawn raid.'

The first that Lady Bowden and Graham Young

knew about being investigated for benefit fraud

was when police turned up and knocked on their door very early one morning.

'I've come along to the council offices to hear the report

'from our undercover investigator.'

Officers from the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham

attended early morning at the home of Lady Oriol Bowden.

Graham Young opened the door. He was in his pyjamas.

On gaining entry to the property, Oriol Bowden was in the lounge,

also in her nightwear.

Graham Young was clearly perturbed that we were there that early

and he was quite annoyed that the police were there, full stop.

'No wonder Graham Young was so angry.

'It seemed that the early birds from the council

'had definitely caught their worms.'

When we went into the house,

it was clear that one of the bedrooms was not used.

That's clearly being used as a junk room.

The assumption to us was that there was only one usable bedroom

and it's clear they were sharing the same bed.

What did they say in their defence?

The defence was that Mr Young had been recently unwell

and that Oriol Bowden was looking after him.

They said he wasn't living there, he was staying there temporarily.

'But their story didn't make any difference to the police.

'Lady Bowden and Graham Young were both arrested

'on the suspicion of benefit fraud.

'Meanwhile, the team continued their search of the property.'

Personal effects were found belonging to Graham Young.

Also, there were an exchange of cards

and stationery that we've recovered,

showing that there was clearly a relationship

between them that was more than just friends.

"Darling Oriol, much joy ahead. Love Graham, kiss, kiss, kiss."

OK, it's more than platonic, this, isn't it?

'And there was plenty more where that came from,

'including various letters and postcards addressed to them both.

'A framed photograph of Graham taken while on holiday in Venice

'and a joint membership of the Caravan Club.

'Hm, ideal for when they're tired of all those foreign trips.'

The other pictures that the police took were photographs

that clearly put Mr Young at this property.

If we look at this photograph, it's clearly a picture

of a man's shirt hanging on the back of a door,

and in the bathroom, we have men's toiletries that are clearly belonging

to a male and not a woman.

A male shaver and foam, you know, that belonged to him.

'The team brought all of this evidence back to London,

'where it was added to the piles of paperwork already assembled

'over this huge two-year operation.

'Monique Robbins from the DWP was able to piece together

'the facts before confronting Lady Bowden and Graham Young,

'who were both interviewed under caution later that day.

'Lady Bowden was the first to give her side of the story.'

'My name is Oriol Bowden.

'Erm, I have known Mr Young for a very long time.

'We first met about 1974...'

During the interviews, Oriol Bowden was quite helpful for the first.

For the second interview,

she made no comment on the advice of her solicitor.

Graham Young refused to answer questions during both interviews,

either, "I refuse to answer the questions" or making no comment.

Both denied that they were in a relationship

other than tenant and landlady,

and that their only relationship was that of very good, old friends.

'But their denials fell on deaf ears when the facts spoke for themselves.

'On 6th September, 2010, Lady Bowden and Graham Young went to court.'

When Young and Bowden were finally charged,

they were charged with a total of 18 offences,

including social security fraud offences, money laundering and theft.

'Both Bowden and Young pleaded not guilty to the charges.

'The trial lasted a staggering 12 days,

'in which time the jury heard

'all the detailed evidence that the fraud team had provided.

'In the end, it was the proof of their joint purchase

'of their second Ramsgate property in 2003

'that convinced the court that they were a couple

'before he became her tenant in 2004,

'when she started receiving housing benefit.

'The jury returned a verdict of guilty as charged.

'Young was guilty of failing to notify the council

'that his circumstances had changed and continuing to claim

'income support, housing benefit and council tax benefit.

'While his partner in crime, Lady Bowden,

'was found guilty of acquiring criminal property

'when she received money for the council for Young's benefits.

'The total amount that this unscrupulous pair

'had stolen from the taxpayer?'

At sentencing, Graham Young was given 12 months' imprisonment

and Lady Bowden was given 12 weeks' imprisonment

and the sentences were not suspended.

'So Lady Bowden and Graham Young paid the price for their greed

'but what about the poor old tax payer?'

-How did you get that money back?

-We used the Proceeds of Crime Act.

When the criminal investigation is ongoing,

you're allowed under that legislation

to freeze their assets, which meant she couldn't move them abroad

or hide them so they were there,

ready to be used to repay the taxpayer.

-Ouch. It wasn't her lucky year, was it?

-Nope.

'What a result! Every penny stolen was returned to the public purse.

'Job done.'

As this couple found out to their cost,

peer or pauper, it doesn't really matter who you are,

you can't hide from the law.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd