Baiden/Dowding 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 come-uppance.

Coming up on today's show, the woman who claimed she was a struggling single mother

but used £75,000 of taxpayers' money

to fund a series of luxury holidays abroad.

The holidays were just amazing, they're not something you'd ever dream of going on yourself,

so to actually see them was just unbelievable.

And we meet a brave young woman who's battled all her life

to achieve her dream of becoming a lawyer.

Two days after I'd done my exams I went into hospital.

I remember getting my results in hospital and celebrating

with a Diet Coke and some Skittles.

Could a four-legged friend be the lifeline she needs?

Now, we'd all like to jet off on exotic foreign holidays

or take the credit card out on a spending spree.

But most of us realise that life's luxuries don't come free.

Some people, though, don't think they should have to pay for them

when the likes of you and me, the taxpayer, could foot the bill.

Meet Jennifer Baiden,

an apparently honest single mum from Newham in east London.

She says she needs help to pay the bills

after her boyfriend left her nine years ago.

But it looks like Jennifer may not be as honest as she seems.

She's suspected of happily ripping off the taxpayer to the tune of nearly £75,000.

I've come to Newham to find out more about this suspicious-sounding case.

Emma Vick works for Newham Council.

It's her job to stop benefit fraud in the borough,

so the inquiry into Jennifer Baiden is her responsibility,

along with thousands of other cases every year.

The London borough of Newham, what's it like?

Newham is very diverse, very young population,

very transient, lots of people moving in and out.

And a lot of unemployment.

-It's certainly not an affluent area, is it?

-Certainly not, very deprived.

Got just over 101,000 households in the borough.

And of those, how many people are claiming benefits?

-Just over 42,000.

-Wow. I mean, that's 42%, give or take, isn't it?

-Yeah.

-That is very high, isn't it?

-It is.

What does that cost the council each year?

We spend just under £300 million a year in benefits.

-Gordon Bennett, it's a lot of money!

-It is.

Emma's job is to make sure that that £300 million only goes to the people

that really deserve it, but sadly some of those claimants are guilty

of working the system and nicking cash that isn't rightfully theirs.

Obviously wherever you're handing out money, anywhere in the world,

giving people benefits, it's inevitable you are going to get people

-who try and defraud the system.

-Mm-hm.

-You run the fraud system here, don't you?

-I do.

How much did you recoup last year?

Last year my team uncovered £1.5 million-worth of benefit fraud.

That's an awful lot of money you've got back,

-but how does it compare in relation to the fraud out there?

-It's just the tip of the iceberg.

Emma and the fraud team suspected

that Jennifer Baiden is one of these fraudsters.

She first submitted a claim for income support in August, 1999.

In it, she said she was living with a partner

but failed to fill in the section about his income,

so on this occasion, her application was denied.

Six months later in February, 2000, she submitted another application.

Chantel Mathurin was the fraud investigator in charge of this case,

and on review she noticed that this claim reported some big changes

in Jennifer's circumstances.

On this application form for income support,

she didn't declare a partner, she said that he had gone abroad.

She declared that she was a single parent now

and had no other means of income.

This time, Jennifer's application for income support was successful.

And she was also found to be eligible for several extra benefits.

Mrs Jennifer Baiden continued to receive income support

from 2000 to 2009, so for nine years.

She also received housing benefits and council tax benefit

from the London borough of Newham.

In total, she received £74,800 for income support,

housing benefit and council tax benefit.

£75,000 over nine years is a lot of money.

But as a struggling single mum,

it was help that she was, in theory, entitled to.

And it all seemed fine until one day in 2009.

A man turned up at the local Jobcentre and put in a claim

for income support.

News of this claim soon reached the Newham fraud team.

The gentleman went into the Jobcentre and made claims

purporting to be living at the address behind us

in Plaistow, Newham.

The address this man gave was the same as Jennifer Baiden's.

The Department For Work And Pensions, who run Britain's Jobcentres,

decided to run a check on the property.

Checks were made with the benefit assessors

and they confirmed that on the claim forms

Mrs Baiden only declared herself as living in the property.

This was all the fraud team needed to hear.

If Jennifer Baiden had lied on her benefit claim form,

there was a real danger that she was receiving benefits illegally.

When the DWP reported that the man from the Jobcentre

was also called Baiden, a full investigation kicked into gear.

The Department for Work and Pensions

needed to find out who this gentleman actually was.

The fact that he had the same surname as her wouldn't necessarily mean that it was a partner,

it could've been another member of her family.

So they needed to find out the exact nature of their relationship

and how long this gentleman had been living with her.

If this mysterious Mr Baiden was for instance Jennifer's brother,

who was staying with his sister while he looked for a job,

there wouldn't have been a problem.

But if he was her husband, living full-time with his family

and footing the bills,

then the £75,000 she had received of income support,

housing benefit and council tax benefits

was looking suspiciously like money obtained under false pretences.

So the team needed to find out more information

about Mrs Baiden's circumstances in view of this new development.

They discovered that before he had contacted the Jobcentre,

Mr Baiden had been making a decent wage

working as a chauffeur for some very wealthy clients.

So, this chauffeur's job, we're not talking about a minicab driver

on a Friday night, are we?

No, he was working for a high-end London company,

so he'd be going to top-class London hotels, picking up by appointment,

going to corporate dinners, things like that,

and chauffeuring some probably quite wealthy people around London.

Normally when you've got that sort of job,

-you're talking about big bucks in tips.

-I would think so, yes.

-Any idea what he was earning?

-He was earning on average about £750 a week,

-which works out a minimum of £40,000 in the year.

-Wow.

Now that they knew that Mr Baiden was a high earner,

Jennifer Baiden's benefit claims

and the story that she'd told Newham Council looked increasingly dodgy.

OK, I want you to hold your horses here for just a second.

Jennifer Baiden may not have been living alone as she had claimed.

A man who has the same surname as her and who's working as a chauffeur for the rich

was also claiming to live at the same address.

But this doesn't prove anything was wrong.

What the investigation team needed now was some hard evidence

to link Jennifer and this Mr Baiden.

And that evidence came in the pretty conclusive form of their marriage certificate,

which the team unearthed in the local register office.

From the certificate, we can tell that the residence at the time

of the marriage for both Mr Baiden and Mrs Baiden was the same.

For now, it's farewell to the fraudsters and hello to the people

we call our saints - those who are in genuine need of help

but are too proud or don't know how to claim what is rightfully theirs,

and the people who point them in the right direction.

When you're a child and you've got your whole life ahead of you,

you can be whoever you want to be.

But just imagine trying to achieve your dream

when even a simple task like making a cup of tea is a daily struggle.

27-year-old Kate Dowding has suffered with arthritis

since she was a child.

Throughout her life, she's had to undergo a series of painful operations,

including a double hip replacement before she was 12.

Despite her illness,

Kate has always tried to lead as normal a life as possible.

I was determined to show that I could do just as well

as everyone else, if not better.

Kate had set her heart on becoming a lawyer

and passed her all her exams with flying colours,

and won a place at university.

My parents were really proud of me. They'd always supported me

through my GCSEs and A-levels. They were really pleased

that I got into the university that I wanted to get to.

But soon after her A-level results came through,

Kate's mother passed away after a three-year battle with cancer.

She was told she had two weeks and she hung on for six.

And I think part of that was kind of seeing my A-level results

and what have you.

Kate and her dad soldiered on together.

For the first year, she managed an exhausting schedule,

being looked after by her father at home

and by a series of carers at university,

paid for by the benefits system.

That was sort of a blessing and a curse in a way,

because it meant that people didn't really talk to me,

cos I was always with my assistant.

It's hard to imagine just how difficult life must have been for Kate,

but then, in her darkest hour,

she got a glimpse of something that could turn her life around.

She was at home watching television

when a programme came on featuring a charity called Canine Partners.

Owen, get the washing. Go on, get it. Good girl.

They provide assistance dogs, trained to perform a whole range of tasks

to help people to disabilities.

Those dogs are really sought after.

How much hope did you hold out for getting one?

Well, when I first applied,

I honestly thought it was quite a low chance,

there would probably be people far more deserving than me.

But I was absolutely thrilled to be invited up to the training centre.

The assessment days are the chance for the partners to come and learn

about what having one of our dogs is about,

and it's our chance to assess people that are interested in having a dog.

We need to be sure that the dog's welfare will be met by that person,

we'll also be looking at their ability to motivate the dog

and to get it to work for them and to focus on them.

Kate passed all these tests with flying colours,

and within a couple of months they'd matched her up with Zara,

a one-year-old Labrador.

I met Zara on one of the assessment days.

And we just clicked. She definitely chose me.

Kate and Zara went from strength to strength,

and in 2008 she graduated with a 2:1 degree in Law.

Through sheer courage and perseverance,

Kate's dream of becoming a lawyer was about to come true.

In September, 2010, she got a job as a trainee solicitor

and went up to Birmingham for a three-day induction course.

Dad had come with me as my carer.

We were waiting at the train station to come home from that,

and Dad just collapsed

and unfortunately the paramedics couldn't revive him

and he passed away from heart failure.

It was horrible.

It was probably the worst day of my life, to be honest,

and it was just so sudden.

There was no warning and I'd been so reliant on my dad.

It just turned my life completely upside down.

So how are things now, then?

They're still difficult, obviously it's still fairly recent

and very raw for me. But it has been a difficult year.

Kate's new employers made arrangements to transfer her

to their Bristol office, and in March, 2011,

she finally started work.

It's really good to know that I've been reliant on benefits

for quite a few years, because of my disability

and sort of taking from the system, really, but it's good to know

that I'm putting something back now

and I'm not relying on the benefits as much.

Good girl.

Although Kate's largely done away with her benefits,

we are still giving her a helping hand

through the Government's Access To Work scheme.

The scheme assesses the needs of each disabled person,

then it pays for specific items that will help them work

alongside their colleagues.

We've obtained the wheelchair.

We're also looking into some voice recognition software for her.

Everything has the aim

of ensuring Kate has a normal working environment

and she's able to do everything that all of us can do in the office.

How do you see the future now?

I think it's a lot brighter with Zara than I thought it would be before.

Even through everything that's happened with Dad

and what have you in the last year,

I still see a future for myself.

Hopefully, you know, in law and with a good career.

Back now to the world of the scrounger,

and the case against benefit cheat Jennifer Baiden is heating up.

The discovery of her marriage certificate was the first piece

of concrete proof that Jennifer was not all she seemed.

Posing as a hard-up single mum whose boyfriend has left her with a child,

this suspected fraudster has been hiding the fact

that she's been living with a bloke who turns out to be her husband,

on top of that, the father of her child,

and to rub salt into the wounds, also has a well-paid job.

Newham Council and the Department For Work And Pensions suspect

that Jennifer has been falsely claiming income support,

housing benefit and council tax benefit to the tune of £75,000.

Emma Vick has been leading the investigation on behalf of the council.

Basically we joint work with the Department Of Work And Pensions.

They investigate income support and we investigate housing benefit and council tax benefit.

So when one of us finds a fraud that has all of those benefits,

we tend to joint work so we can make sure

the whole of the criminality is investigated in one case,

-so it saves time...

-You've pooled your resources, basically.

-Yes.

Joining forces has paid off.

After months of careful investigation,

it was time for the police to move in.

The Department For Work And Pensions believed they had enough information

to go in and arrest Mrs Baiden

and then looked to interview her under caution.

They arrested her with the police, who then searched her premises.

The police search of her flat uncovered vital evidence

that left the investigators in no doubt that,

far from struggling to make ends meet on her benefits,

Jennifer Baiden was living the high life.

They found evidence that she'd been on quite a few nice holidays while she'd been claiming benefits.

You can see here that she went on holiday to Jamaica, it was in 2008.

And this is a woman who supposedly is living life on the breadline?

-That's right.

-Gordon Bennett!

She also went another trip in Jamaica the same year,

-so she actually went to Jamaica twice in one year.

-Two a year?!

I don't believe my ears!

Two Caribbean holidays in 12 months?

Who does she think she is, Coleen Rooney?!

And that wasn't all.

She also went to Canada in 2007, and that was also nearly £2,000.

We're not talking about two weeks camping in Skegness!

No. The holiday themselves were just amazing.

They're not something you'd ever dream of going on, so to see them was unbelievable.

All of a sudden we've got a woman who's not just abusing the system,

-she's having luxury holidays, more than one a year.

-That's right, yes.

She's sticking her fingers up at every decent taxpayer in the country.

It's just obscene. It's just saying, "I can do what I want,

"and you're going to pay for it."

-Yeah, and every other mug out there.

-That's right, yeah.

But then came the piece de resistance.

The police search also uncovered some copies of Jennifer's bank statements,

and what they contained was dynamite.

The team knew that Mr Baiden had a high-paying job as a chauffeur,

but they couldn't prove that he was contributing

to Jennifer's household. Until now.

This is his wages here from the company he was working for,

and this is her bank account, so this shows that his money is going into her bank account

-and then it's available for her to spend.

-She's got that income

going into her bank account and she's not telling you about it?

That's right. And those figures there are his wages,

and you can see they're going in every fortnight.

It's all a far cry from the sorry picture Jennifer's been painting

of an abandoned women struggling to get by on her own.

So let's just get this straight.

All the time she's claiming to be a single mum

with absolutely no income at all,

yet she's out there earning a rather handsome wage

and paying a considerable chunk of it directly into her bank account.

The DWP now had direct proof that Jennifer Baiden had been lying.

While they were searching her flat, Jennifer was waiting

to be interviewed at Forest Gate Police Station in east London.

The first thing the DWP wanted to know

was how she had funded her extravagant lifestyle.

When she was asked how she managed to afford

to pay for these foreign holidays,

she informed that family members had given her the money

to go abroad.

The next question they wanted answering

was what exactly was her relationship to Mr Baiden.

Remember, they've already found her marriage certificate,

but on her benefit application, she said she was single

and was bringing up their child alone.

This time round, she had a different story.

She stated that she had married him in a traditional African ceremony

and that it wasn't a legal marriage.

She also said that he frequented the property from time to time

and looked after the children,

but didn't permanently reside at the property with her.

Not a legal marriage? Pull the other one.

That certificate looks like the real deal to me.

And as for not living at the property, it didn't look like that

when the police went round.

A number of documents were uncovered when the property,

which is the block of flats behind me, was searched by the police.

Some of those documents included bank statements

in the name of Mr Baiden at the address.

Also found were male clothing in the main bedroom

and male grooming products in the bathroom.

It's looking like our single mum is about as single

as a double cheeseburger. But that's not all.

See, as well as keeping that small matter of having a husband quiet,

it looks like Jennifer was keeping shtum about something else.

For the time being, Jennifer Baiden was released on bail,

but ordered to return six months later.

This gave Newham Council time to build up their case,

and there was one big question that needed answering.

When the police showed up at Jennifer's flat with their search warrant,

they found her with not just one, but two children.

A call to the local register office

revealed that this second child had the same father as the first.

Good old Mr Baiden.

This child was born in October, 2003,

three years after Jennifer had declared on her benefit application

that he had upped and left her and that she was coping alone.

We believe she didn't tell us about the second child

born in October, 2003 because this was during the time

that she claimed to be a single parent.

We believe that she was trying to hide the fact

that she was still in a relationship with the child's father, Mr Baiden.

And she definitely couldn't risk that,

because if the authorities had got wind of the fact

that a high-earning father was on the scene,

that would have exposed Jennifer's lies and put an end

to all the lucrative benefits she was claiming.

The lengths that some people will go to to try and avoid detection.

I mean, denying the existence of your own flesh and blood,

your own child! It defies belief, really.

By the time Jennifer came back in for her second interview,

the case for the prosecution was ready.

This time, she was interviewed by Chantel herself

on behalf of Newham Council.

The reason for this interview is we believe you failed to declare a change in your circumstances

and possibly made some false declarations on application forms

for housing benefits and council tax benefit.

This time around, Jennifer had got herself a solicitor

who read out a prepared statement.

I deny the allegations.

I have not acted dishonestly

at any stage in relation to my benefit claims.

My husband comes and goes from the house, but we do not live together.

In the prepared statement she denied the allegations put to her

and also denied that she had acted dishonestly.

She stated that she was a single parent, and although her partner

came to the property from time to time, he did not live with her.

Jennifer's statement didn't wash with Chantel.

She refused to answer any further questions,

but by that stage, the facts spoke for themselves.

-So what happened next?

-Then we prepared the papers for prosecution,

-and the case went to court.

-Are we talking about trial by jury?

Yes, it was held at Inner London Crown Court and it was a jury.

Jennifer's trial began on the 4th of April, 2011.

Despite the weight of evidence against her,

she entered a plea of not guilty.

How did she think she was going to get away with it

when you've got all this evidence here?

We don't know, she just decided from day one that she wouldn't cooperate.

He wasn't living with her and she was not guilty,

it didn't matter what was put in front of her,

-she maintained she wasn't guilty.

-So all along, she either thought

she was very clever and she could beat the system

-or that she was innocent. Which one do you think it was?

-She thought she was clever.

-Was she?

-No, she wasn't, because the jury found her guilty.

Months of detailed investigation

by the combined fraud teams of Newham Council and the DWP

had finally paid off.

On the 13th of April, 2011, Jennifer Baiden was convicted on four counts

of false representation, one count relating to income support

and three counts of falsely claiming housing benefits

and council tax benefits.

In total, the judge found her guilty

of swindling the public purse

out of £75,000.

The date for sentencing was set for the 12th of May.

But on the day, while they were waiting to hear what the judge had decided,

some news came out of the blue.

We were expecting her to be sentenced this morning,

but it transpired that there was a query

as to whether she may have some previous convictions.

The court had discovered that Jennifer had been convicted

of false accounting in 1997, while she was working at an NHS care home.

She denied this allegation,

stating her passport had been stolen

and that someone had obviously used her identity

and had been convicted of this crime.

The DWP and the prosecutors did some more digging

and they found that the fingerprints of the person who had been convicted

for this false accounting matched those of Mrs Jennifer Baiden.

Jennifer's desperate attempt to lie her way out of trouble again

didn't do her any good, and on the 27th of May, 2011,

she went back to court to hear her sentence.

In summing up, the judge said, "I consider you to be dishonest.

"You told a series of lies to people and you are now taking the brunt."

-So, what did she get?

-She got a 12-month custodial sentence,

-but that was then suspended for two years.

-And why?

The judge felt her husband had a part to play in the fraud

and that it was unfair of her to shoulder the whole blame,

and therefore he didn't send her to prison.

So the judge took into account that Jennifer Baiden's children

are still very young and would be deprived of their mother

if she was in prison.

However, if she reoffends in the next couple of years,

she'll be sent down.

I'd have liked her to have gone to prison, I think she deserved it.

It's unfortunate that she didn't,

but it's a decision for the judge to make.

And as much as I can be disappointed, it's not my decision.

Meanwhile, Emma and her team are doing everything they can

to recoup the £75,000 that Jennifer Baiden stole.

We'll pursue her as much as we can, we'll take her to County Court,

we will do whatever we can to get our money back,

so we're pursuing that at the moment.

It's been a painstaking investigation

and the fraud team have worked tirelessly to bring Jennifer Baiden to justice.

But it does go to show, there's no such thing as a free lunch

and certainly not a free luxury holiday.

And if you want to live the high life at the expense of the taxpayer,

then the fraud team are going to bring you down.

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