“In April 2022, welfare officers went to Fairfield House to visit Mr Bergin and were left waiting and were told by Ms Bergin that her father-in-law did not want to be disturbed.
The court heard that after a wait, the officials were introduced to a man in bed who had a pair of shoes on, who was much younger than Mr Bergin and bore no resemblance to him.”
>The pension fraud was first detected after an amateur gerontologist carried out research in 2022 in relation to a man in Mountrath who was 110 years of age.
Nuts that the Department of Social protection hadn’t unearthed the Methuselah of Mountrath off their own bat.
Say it with me class: welfare cheats cheat us all.
And now she gets two years free roof and board!
Very interesting piece on radio a month or so ago detailing research into all these geographical areas that claim to offer the longest lifespan.. The general conclusions were that these outliers were either a result of poor records (i.e. certain areas of Japan post world war two), or Welfare fraud (mediterranean area).
Not trying to minimise it, but we lose much more from tax fraud, but the same effort doesn’t seem to go into chasing those fraudsters down.
Only 2 years???
Compulsory sell order on the farm of 99 acres. Get the money back.
How is she not being forced to pay this back? Absolute disgrace of a human being
‘Who owns that head in the bed where my aul head used to be’ no but seriously, what a scummy thing to do. 2 years ?! Where’s the money ?! It often times seems that people take these risks knowing full well IF they get caught it will be worth it anyhow. Sickening.
She will be out in 9 months. About 1k per day at that rate. Good work if you can find it. Assuming she is not going to pay back any of the money and that the state will not seize assets to cover same.
In my home country every retiree and pensioner have to once a year bring id to the bank he is paid at and prove he is alive. Bank staff just have to go in to a system connected to the government and mark it as done for the year and ask for the person to sign a piece of paper. If bringing the person to the bank is not possible they have to schedule for a government official to go to their homes
I don’t know, I think the judge has been too harsh on her. The Irish Times reports
_She had also suffered a number of significant health issues, the court heard, and suffered from a “chronic low mood over the last couple of months”._
I thought that if you had low mood for a couple of months you couldn’t be sentenced to prison.
They own 99acres of land and did not sell any of it by way of reimbursing the state
Good deterrent for all the others doing it, of which (no doubt), there are many.
I will happily go to jail for 2 years if they let me keep 271,000 euros 😂
> It also heard that after the visit one of the welfare officers visited a local graveyard and found the grave for Mr Bergin and his late wife.
> He said the actions of the accused were clearly premeditated, because the death of the John Bergin was never registered.
Does anyone know how he had a grave if his death wasn’t registered?
What I will say about that story is that she got four years for defrauding the taxpayer, but still, the claimed amount was less than the cost of the bike shelter paid for by the government.Whats the bigger fraud here
Will they not be made repay back all the money?
I can’t sympotise with her. If she’s taking the fall for someone else , then shame on them for not stepping up.
Imagine letting your ma take the rap for this
I dunno. Against our backdrop of risibly negligible penalties for crimes of great violence and child abuse (if they are even penalised with jail at all) I can’t help feeling this is an indefensible decision by the judge. This woman has now chucked everything away and will always be ostracised, and ought to feel the pips squeak from some severe financial penalty (as everyone’s saying, sell property at the very least!)
But when men younger than this woman are routinely permitted to have ‘mitigating factors’ such as their great age (!!), the impact on their family, and having a bit of a sniffle in winter taken into account in trials even for *the rape of minors*, and which mitigation grants them a suspended sentence since they are being punished enough in their community, yadda yadda, this present sentence strikes me as utterly unjustifiable.
I hate so much to be the one saying this, given my regular rants about the way women’s rights often count for little, but I think there’s an identifiable bias against female criminals in crimes such as this one, possibly rooted in an abiding faith that such things never happen. When it does, there’s a strange outrage underlying many a sentence, I think.
Whatever though, I fail to see how anyone benefits from plonking the woman here in prison. As so often, crimes against property are taken more seriously than those against the person.
DSP better get a judgement on the house and land that has to be paid before it can be sold or inherited.
Greedy cunts but hopefully a case like this makes DSP wake up and try prevent this type of thing.
It’s very embarrassing for the Dept. and shows up incompetentanve or pure laziness.
Why was she not forced to sell her land. Even the judge questioned the reason put forward for not doing so. She should pay the full amount back to the state. She knew well what she was at Just shows how pathetic the social welfare are at detecting fraud. There should have been red flags YEARS ago.
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This is comical. My favourite part is:
“In April 2022, welfare officers went to Fairfield House to visit Mr Bergin and were left waiting and were told by Ms Bergin that her father-in-law did not want to be disturbed.
The court heard that after a wait, the officials were introduced to a man in bed who had a pair of shoes on, who was much younger than Mr Bergin and bore no resemblance to him.”
>The pension fraud was first detected after an amateur gerontologist carried out research in 2022 in relation to a man in Mountrath who was 110 years of age.
Nuts that the Department of Social protection hadn’t unearthed the Methuselah of Mountrath off their own bat.
Say it with me class: welfare cheats cheat us all.
And now she gets two years free roof and board!
Very interesting piece on radio a month or so ago detailing research into all these geographical areas that claim to offer the longest lifespan.. The general conclusions were that these outliers were either a result of poor records (i.e. certain areas of Japan post world war two), or Welfare fraud (mediterranean area).
Not trying to minimise it, but we lose much more from tax fraud, but the same effort doesn’t seem to go into chasing those fraudsters down.
Only 2 years???
Compulsory sell order on the farm of 99 acres. Get the money back.
How is she not being forced to pay this back? Absolute disgrace of a human being
‘Who owns that head in the bed where my aul head used to be’ no but seriously, what a scummy thing to do. 2 years ?! Where’s the money ?! It often times seems that people take these risks knowing full well IF they get caught it will be worth it anyhow. Sickening.
She will be out in 9 months. About 1k per day at that rate. Good work if you can find it. Assuming she is not going to pay back any of the money and that the state will not seize assets to cover same.
In my home country every retiree and pensioner have to once a year bring id to the bank he is paid at and prove he is alive. Bank staff just have to go in to a system connected to the government and mark it as done for the year and ask for the person to sign a piece of paper.
If bringing the person to the bank is not possible they have to schedule for a government official to go to their homes
I don’t know, I think the judge has been too harsh on her. The Irish Times reports
_She had also suffered a number of significant health issues, the court heard, and suffered from a “chronic low mood over the last couple of months”._
I thought that if you had low mood for a couple of months you couldn’t be sentenced to prison.
They own 99acres of land and did not sell any of it by way of reimbursing the state
Good deterrent for all the others doing it, of which (no doubt), there are many.
I will happily go to jail for 2 years if they let me keep 271,000 euros 😂
> It also heard that after the visit one of the welfare officers visited a local graveyard and found the grave for Mr Bergin and his late wife.
> He said the actions of the accused were clearly premeditated, because the death of the John Bergin was never registered.
Does anyone know how he had a grave if his death wasn’t registered?
What I will say about that story is that she got four years for defrauding the taxpayer, but still, the claimed amount was less than the cost of the bike shelter paid for by the government.Whats the bigger fraud here
Will they not be made repay back all the money?
I can’t sympotise with her. If she’s taking the fall for someone else , then shame on them for not stepping up.
Imagine letting your ma take the rap for this
I dunno. Against our backdrop of risibly negligible penalties for crimes of great violence and child abuse (if they are even penalised with jail at all) I can’t help feeling this is an indefensible decision by the judge. This woman has now chucked everything away and will always be ostracised, and ought to feel the pips squeak from some severe financial penalty (as everyone’s saying, sell property at the very least!)
But when men younger than this woman are routinely permitted to have ‘mitigating factors’ such as their great age (!!), the impact on their family, and having a bit of a sniffle in winter taken into account in trials even for *the rape of minors*, and which mitigation grants them a suspended sentence since they are being punished enough in their community, yadda yadda, this present sentence strikes me as utterly unjustifiable.
I hate so much to be the one saying this, given my regular rants about the way women’s rights often count for little, but I think there’s an identifiable bias against female criminals in crimes such as this one, possibly rooted in an abiding faith that such things never happen. When it does, there’s a strange outrage underlying many a sentence, I think.
Whatever though, I fail to see how anyone benefits from plonking the woman here in prison. As so often, crimes against property are taken more seriously than those against the person.
DSP better get a judgement on the house and land that has to be paid before it can be sold or inherited.
Greedy cunts but hopefully a case like this makes DSP wake up and try prevent this type of thing.
It’s very embarrassing for the Dept. and shows up incompetentanve or pure laziness.
Why was she not forced to sell her land. Even the judge questioned the reason put forward for not doing so. She should pay the full amount back to the state. She knew well what she was at
Just shows how pathetic the social welfare are at detecting fraud. There should have been red flags YEARS ago.
Got too greedy and got caught out
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