Ashley and Pink/Princess Alice Trust/Hynes Saints and Scroungers

In the UK, most of us work hard and pay our taxes.

Most people, basically, intrinsically, won't fiddle.

I'm happy I live in a society that has a safety net for the poor.

And we generally agree that it's right that

a proportion of what you earn should go into a pot that's there

to help you should you need it.

But that money doesn't always find its way to the right people.

-I think lying to gain the benefit is so wrong.

-It's awful!

If you believe in karma, it's going to come back round

and get you, isn't it?

There are big changes taking place in the welfare system

here in the UK.

And now it's more important than ever that the right help

gets to the right people.

This is the world of saints and scroungers.

Coming up on today's show:

Two serial fraudsters claiming any benefits they could think of,

despite earning a fair whack from their property empire...

We found evidence of foreign holidays, receipts for jewellery

running into thousands of pounds,

which is a lot more than you would expect, again,

for people reliant on benefits.

..and a man struck down with a mystery illness on holiday finds

-out his life has changed for ever.

-I was frightened.

I thought he was going to die...

..and I'm going to get really upset.

I'm just going to be on my own.

With unemployment at over two million,

finding a job these days can be very hard,

but the good news is there is state support there to help you

through that period and get out the other side.

But all those rejections, the better-luck-next-times,

they can get you down.

They can lead you to despair or even a life of crime.

Right. Position applied for. "Jurnalissed".

Meet Diane Ashley from Clapham, South London.

She's a single, unemployed woman with three children.

She'd been claiming Jobseeker's Allowance, housing benefit

and council tax benefit to help her along a bit

while she looked for work.

Diane Ashley had put a claim in for Lambeth Council from 2008 for

assistance with housing benefit and council tax benefit.

She'd claim that she paid rent for the property she lived in.

And they did help with that because of her low income.

Michael O'Reilly's a fraud investigations manager

working for Lambeth Council,

and information that came to their attention at the start

of 2010 suggested Diane's job hunt was going better than she'd

let on to the council.

We'd received an allegation from the benefits

service from Lambeth Council,

indicating that Diane Ashley may have had undeclared earned income.

The fraud team knew Diane Ashley received Jobseeker's Allowance,

which is only available to people actively looking for work.

But the information from Her Majesty's Revenue

and Customs was that she'd applied to them for working tax credits.

Working tax credits is something the government provides for you

if you're working but on a low income, and it's based upon

the number of hours you work and how much you earn.

But the clue is in the title. Working tax credits.

You've got to be in a job.

Diane Ashley had told the DWP

and Lambeth Council that she was jobless.

Missed a bit.

When the HMRC ran a routine check with their friends

at Lambeth Council, alarm bells started to ring.

At that point, one of our investigators picked up the case,

and because we didn't have specific information,

decided to carry out some background checks.

Going back over her claim forms,

Diane Ashley had told Lambeth Council

she rented a property in Surridge Court in Clapham,

South London, that she was single, had three children and didn't work.

Diane Ashley had had earned income from employment

she had previously that we weren't made aware of.

On checking her credit record, we established that she had accounts in

the name of Diane Pink, also accounts in association with Rudolph Pink.

Again, on checking her benefit claim,

her landlord was declared as a Mr Rudolph Pink. Quite an unusual name.

And we obviously wanted to look further into that.

Mr Pink... Do you know, I'm sure I know a movie with a Mr Pink?

If this information proved correct,

it was another serious allegation against Ashley.

Being in a relationship with her landlord would make any

claims for benefit completely invalid.

So, Mr Pink - fact or film fiction?

Rudolph Pink lived in Lewisham.

The indication from the credit checks we carried out

indicated that she had a close association with Rudolph Pink...

..joint bank accounts, bank accounts in his name,

a mortgage for an address that we knew nothing about.

So it pointed to the fact that, potentially, Diane Ashley

and Rudolph Pink were actually a couple or were working together.

Hi, babe.

Yes. There was a distinct possibility that love

was in the air between Mr Pink and Diane Ashley,

so the investigation now turned its attention to the properties

known to be connected to either Pink or Ashley.

Pink was registered as living in a house in a different borough,

Lewisham, so Lambeth's fraud team dropped them a line.

Because of the nature of his work,

the case manager has chosen to remain anonymous.

I looked at the claim, and Mr Pink was in receipt

of housing benefit and council tax benefit in respect of

a property in Carholme Road,

where he stated that his landlord was Miss Ashley.

Whoa! So hold on!

Mr Pink had named Diane Ashley,

supposedly a single mother living on benefits, as his landlord,

and she was claiming that he was her landlord!

Not only that, Mr Pink had stated he was single

and had been claiming housing benefit at his address

in Carholme Road in Lewisham for eight years,

pocketing close to a whopping £70,000.

This is the street where Rudolph Pink made a housing benefit

claim for as the tenant of Diane Ashley.

We did a land registry check,

and the owner of the property came back as Diane Ashley.

So Diane Ashley was now a landlord

and the owner of a property in Lewisham,

something she neglected to mention in any of her benefits claims.

But Michael O'Reilly's team wasn't content to stop its search there.

We looked at her benefit history,

found that prior to living at Lambeth...

Living at Lambeth in 2008, she'd been resident in the borough of Thanet.

So she'd previously lived in Kent.

Michael and his team got straight on the phone to Thanet Council

and discovered that all three properties she'd claimed

benefits from had been owned by either herself or Rudolph Pink.

What started out as a single woman on benefits

while looking for work now looked like a woman in a long-term

relationship with connections to multiple

properties across three councils in London and Kent.

And yet, over the years, she'd claimed

almost £34,000 in benefits from Lambeth Council,

nearly £21,000 from Thanet Council

and over £2,000 from the Department for Work & Pensions -

a total of almost £57,000 of taxpayers' money that she

almost certainly wasn't entitled to.

For now, it's farewell to the scroungers that are trying to fleece the system

and say hello to the ones we call our saints -

those people who do everything to make sure that those

in desperate need of help who are too proud

or simply don't know how to help themselves get what they deserve.

You know how life goes for most of us?

You work hard and you make plans.

But what happens if a debilitating illness comes along that

means you can't work any more,

and the plans you've made? You have to tear them up and start again.

It's exactly what happened to Tony and Carol Cripps when, in 2011,

Tony suddenly fell ill while the couple were on holiday in Lanzarote.

It was just this idea, it was March and we just needed some sun

so we thought, "Right, Lanzarote looks great, let's go there."

Tony enjoyed his work as an administrator in the building trade,

and Carol loved her receptionist job in London.

They were both actively enjoying life

and holidaying as often as they could.

Got on the plane and the first instance I thought was a bit strange

was Tony fell asleep straight away.

I just thought, "Well, he's obviously overworked.

"We really need this holiday."

Things quickly deteriorated and the next day,

Carol decided to take Tony straight to hospital.

They said did I notice anything different about Tony.

And when I looked, his face had fallen on one side

and I thought, "Oh, my word, he's having a stroke."

I was concerned for Tony and I was frightened.

I thought he was going to die

and... I'm going to get really upset.

..I was going to be on my own.

He wanted to know -

and so did I - overwhelmingly, what was the matter with him.

But we were told that we needed to see a neurologist

as soon as we got back to the UK.

On returning home to UK, they immediately saw a specialist,

but they were still no closer to a diagnosis.

You'd been on holiday

and terrible things had happened that you can't really explain.

-Mm-hm.

-Um...and at this time, you're not really sure what's going on.

-What was going through your mind?

-I knew that it was serious.

I didn't know quite what, though.

I thought cancer, brain tumour,

anything along those lines.

We were told what it wasn't, but not necessarily what it was.

It was eight long months later

that they found out exactly what WAS wrong with Tony.

We finally had a meeting with a neurologist and he said that,

obviously, it was quite a serious thing Tony had wrong.

We were told it was progressive.

It would start with a walking stick, then it would go to a frame,

then it would go to a wheelchair and then bedridden and then death.

Tony had been diagnosed with an extremely rare condition

called multiple systems atrophy, a terminal illness which causes

certain cells in the brain to degenerate.

It was pretty devastating.

I always thought when Tony and I got married that I'd met my soul mate.

And that we'd grow old together.

And to know that I have a very, very limited time with him...

..it is really, really, really devastating.

What did you find out about the condition

and what it meant, physically, for Tony?

Tony finds it difficult speaking to people for a very long time.

His voice tends to be very good some days and his speech is fine,

and on other days, he struggles.

-You're able to talk about this in quite a matter-of-fact way.

-Mm-hm.

-Clearly, it's something that affects you very deeply.

-Absolutely.

-And I'm sure you've shed tears over it.

-Yes.

It's a coping mechanism,

because if I was to worry all the time about what's going to

happen to Tony, I wouldn't be doing him any service at all.

And I want to be able to keep a level head and not fluster, fuss him.

It's going to only get worse and increase,

so I try very hard not to think about that.

The time for my tears will be afterwards.

When Tony's not here.

Now I'm going to go.

To effectively be losing the substance of who that man was

-in a very short time, I think that's heartbreaking.

-It is.

It's very difficult. Yeah.

Carol is coping with the situation the only way she knows how -

by staying strong for Tony -

but it wasn't just the two of them

that would have to come to terms with his condition.

To be honest, when I heard about my dad's diagnosis,

I didn't really quite know what it was, what to expect,

how bad it would be, how bad it would get.

It was devastating news for the family.

Tony had been forced to stop working, and Carol had had to

give up work to look after him, so they had no income.

To make matters worse,

at the time, they were living with Tony's elderly mother at her house.

-So, you're living in this house?

-That's right, yes.

Why did that have to change?

It became apparent very early on that we couldn't change the house

to suit Tony, because of his condition.

With Tony's mother's house becoming rapidly more unsuitable for him

and the couple barely able to support themselves,

the situation became unbearable.

Tony and Carol were clearly in desperate need of help,

both emotionally and financially.

They needed somewhere to live that would accommodate Tony's constantly-changing needs,

so they turned to the local hospice for some advice.

Because Tony's father died of cancer,

we've always known that Princess Alice is there.

The patients that get referred to us

will have some form of life-limiting disease or illness.

We offer all sorts of care and support,

so we do focus on the physical problems that somebody might

be experiencing, for example, pain, nausea, breathlessness.

We also look at the emotional support that we can offer

themselves, their family, their children.

Also, financial support in terms of advising them.

Tony and Carol's case was handed to Gauri Chauhan, who immediately

realised how much help and support they desperately needed.

When I first met Tony and Carol, things looked really bad.

You know, Tony wasn't feeling very well

and he was noticing changes every

day and Carol was having to stop work and so it was really scary

to think about what might happen next.

I'd established that what they needed was definitely to

be in the right housing as well as getting Carol some Carer's Allowance

and looking into Employment and Support Allowance for Tony.

It sounded like Gauri could be the person to bring some

much-needed relief into Tony and Carol's lives.

Let's talk about Tony and Carol - what could you do for them, specifically?

I think they'd been on the housing list for about five months,

wanting to get a bungalow and also to make sure that Tony

and Carol were getting the right benefits, so I think when I first

met Tony he was just getting the low rate of Disability Living Allowance.

We worked together to fill out a Disability Living Allowance form

to make sure it was a higher rate.

Also making sure that he was on Employment and Support Allowance

and Carol was getting Carer's Allowance.

Eventually, I think in February, they moved into their bungalow

and it was a really significant move for them, really important,

but also really difficult, because they just didn't have the

finances by then to be able to afford the basics that they needed.

At that point, we approached a lot of grant charities to see

what we could get from where and one charity actually gave us

£1,000, which is significantly more than others have

given in the past, so that was quite positive.

We're terribly grateful to Gauri, because without her help, we

wouldn't have known about the grants that would have been available

for us to use and we wouldn't have been able to source them...

..which... I don't know where we would be.

So, Gauri has helped with the immediate financial need.

Now, it's about making sure Tony has the best possible

quality of life.

-You see Tony here...

-Yes.

What does HE get from it?

Um, well, Tony comes to the day hospice here

and I run a discussion group in the day hospice every week and...

There's a real sense there of people not being so isolated

with their illnesses or symptoms or problems in life.

I guess for Carol,

it also means that she's just got some space to herself.

The hospice is clearly a very important place for many

terminally-ill patients and their families.

But more importantly, what does Tony think of it?

-How are you doing?

-I'm doing fine.

-It's a great place, isn't it?

-It's so different!

-Yeah.

-I feel so at home here.

-Yeah.

It must make a big difference for you and Carol as well,

because...you know, if you were thinking to yourself, everything

is on Carol, all the responsibility is on her, that's hard.

Yes, I mean, it's like I used to do so much,

carrying shopping and working outside, the pavement

and things that a bloke would do, so

it's been difficult to come to terms with being disabled for that reason.

Does this place change, then, the way things are at home with Carol?

Yeah, because I take great comfort knowing that she's got

someone at her side, someone that will help her in every way possible.

-Take care, mate.

-Lovely seeing you, Tony.

-Lovely speaking to you.

-Be good.

-And if you can't be good...

-Be careful.

-Thank you.

-Ta-ra, mate.

'It's clear that the hospice provides well-needed support

'and respite for both Carol and Tony in very difficult circumstances.'

There is no cure to what Tony is going through,

so what are you hoping to get from what to a lot of people would say

was a fairly hopeless situation?

It's tough, we're all dying,

we're all able to push that aside, to some extent,

but for Tony and other patients here at the hospice, they're,

you know, confronted with it on a daily basis

and that's really difficult for them.

'The work that Gauri does at the hospice is overwhelming and if

'anyone deserves the kind of support she can give, it's Tony and Carol.'

If it was not for this place,

if you can imagine now without this place and now with this place,

what are the main differences, what does it mean for you?

It's not just the here and now, it's in the future as Tony progresses.

Obviously, our need for a place like this will increase.

It's comforting to know that there are people here to help me

and Tony, and our family,

to cope with Tony's condition.

It's easy to look at Tony and Carol's situation

and say, "There's no happy ending here, it's desperate,"

and it's true that they both know, to a certain extent,

what the future has in store for them, but in the hospice

they've found a group of people

and an organisation that knows how to handle that future,

which allows them to concentrate on enjoying and making the most

of what they've got right now, today, which is a precious thing.

Time now to return to the world of our money-hungry scroungers.

Lambeth and Lewisham councils are on the trail of Diane Ashley

and her potential partner Rudolph Pink.

Once we'd gathered all the evidence, it was clear that Ashley

and Pink were both involved in serious fraud.

Diane Ashley had been claiming benefits

to the tune of almost £57,000,

based on the fact she was single and looking for work,

but Lambeth and Lewisham councils' fraud teams had discovered

she was, in fact, a property owner.

Not only that, there was evidence she was in a serious

relationship with the man she said was her landlord, Rudolph Pink,

something that could render her claims invalid.

Our records indicated that Diane Ashley lived in a property

in Lambeth. Lewisham indicated that she was a landlord of a property

in their borough and was claiming rent in respect of Rudolph Pink.

So, in the boroughs of Lambeth and Lewisham,

Diane Ashley was looking like two very different people.

Stick with me, because this is where it gets interesting.

Ashley is claiming housing benefit and council tax benefit

from this property here in Clapham,

claiming that she is unemployed and on Jobseeker's Allowance,

however, meanwhile, she's also the landlord of this property in Catford

where her potential fella is claiming benefits.

Meanwhile, investigators in Thanet have them

linked to three properties here in Margate.

It's starting to sound as though this couple don't really need

the taxpayers' help at all.

But Lewisham and Lambeth fraud teams still needed more evidence

to prove their cases against them.

The investigation had established links between the couple

and a number of properties,

but we really wanted to confirm that they were married.

If we could confirm that, that would present an open-and-shut case.

To try and establish that the couple were married, we had

gone to the Lewisham Registry Office

and asked them to check their records.

That drew a blank.

At that point, we were at a bit of a dead end

because we didn't have any proof of the couple being married.

Despite not finding any record of marriage,

the investigators knew there was another way to gather evidence -

a much more direct way.

We needed to find this evidence

and the only way to do this would be to arrange a raid

and arrest at the property we believed they were both living at.

SIRENS BLARE

So, the fraud investigators wasted no time

and the very next day at 7am, Carholme Road in Catford,

where it was suspected they lived together, was raided by the police.

We were hoping to find evidence of the offences that we were looking

at, so evidence linking Mr Pink and Miss Ashley together as a couple.

And surprise, surprise, Diane Ashley and Rudolph Pink answered the door.

When we raided the address, the couple appeared quite surprised,

it was quite early in the morning when we went into the address

and they hadn't been up properly,

they were still in bed clothing, so they did seem a bit stunned.

There seemed to be a little bit of concern shown by Miss Ashley

when the raid took place, but Mr Pink didn't seem very concerned

and he maintained his silence throughout the raid.

Diane Ashley and Rudolph Pink may not have seemed overly

concerned about the early-morning raid,

but would the investigators find the evidence that they were looking for?

Their lifestyle was much greater than you would expect from a couple

reliant on benefits.

They had a very nice home, the home was furnished

and to a much higher standard than you would normally

find people on benefits having.

We found evidence of foreign holidays, we found

evidence of receipts for jewellery, running into thousands of pounds,

which is a lot more than you would expect again

for people reliant on benefits.

Straightaway we noticed that around on shelving

were photographs that appeared to be wedding photographs, erm...

Further trekking through documentation that was

boxed in the house unearthed a wedding photo album

and also an invitation card to a wedding

and it gave details of the wedding location and the date.

This was the crucial piece of evidence

they'd been searching for, which so far had not come to light.

We were surprised that they had got married in Lewisham,

because we hadn't managed to unearth any evidence of it.

It was quite clear to us

that a married couple can't have one partner being the landlord

of the other, so therefore the claim was totally invalid.

But if the fraud investigators had found wedding invitations

and wedding photos of a marriage that took place at a church

in Lewisham in 2003, why had this not come up at the registry office?

This church is in the Borough of Lewisham,

so we were a bit surprised as to why it hadn't come

to light before that they had, in fact, got married.

When we checked with the church,

it turned out that they hadn't sent off all their records to the

local registry office and that's why it hadn't come to light that they

were married before when we made our enquiries with the registry office.

So a simple administrative backlog in the church had meant that

Mr and Mrs Pink's nuptials hadn't popped up in the system.

Now, armed with an overwhelming amount of evidence,

Mr and Mrs Pink were arrested and interviewed under caution.

Clearly, the couple now had some questions to answer.

During the interview with Mr Pink and Miss Ashley,

they were both questioned about the fact that they were married.

Both parties gave no comment to the questions.

So the couple still refused to admit they were married and had nothing to

say about the £126,000-worth of benefits

they had fraudulently received.

They both got bail, but a month later they were due in court.

Diane Ashley was given

a 12-month suspended sentence

and Rudolph Pink was jailed

for ten months.

Things aren't looking too rosy for the Pinks -

jail time and the prospect of having to pay back all the money

they owe, but look at it this way, there is a kind of irony.

Fraudulently obtained housing benefit, which benefited them

while they were in houses, is now being used to benefit those

who need houses.

Yeah, that kind of works.