Last updated 22:46, Saturday, 12 July 2008

A MARYPORT woman who claimed benefits as a single mother, even though her husband was living with her and taking her on exotic holidays, has been warned she is likely to go to prison.

Karen Jane Burns, 44, of Ismay Close, was found guilty at Carlisle Crown Court of four charges of benefit fraud amounting to about £20,000.

She was cleared of three more charges dating back to 2004.

Burns was remanded on bail for background reports.

Judge Barbara Forrester said she viewed the case so seriously that she was likely to send Burns to prison when she returns for sentence on August 6.

A jury heard how Burns claimed income support and other benefits even after her husband, whom she had previously kicked out for having a string of affairs, moved back in with her.

She was sent leaflets reminding her that she should tell the authorities if she was sharing her home with anyone else, but repeatedly failed to tell the authorities that he was back.

Kim Whittlestone, prosecuting, said there was a wealth of evidence to show that Burns’s husband had been living with her in a “common household”.

When Department of Work and Pensions officials searched the house they found documents which showed that Mr Burns lived with her.

Burns had claimed that, though they opened a joint bank account, she was separated from her husband and he used her address only to collect his mail.

She said she went on holiday with him – to Thailand, Malaysia and Kenya – only because she wanted him to have to pay for her in return for the pain he had caused her by cheating on her.

“I didn’t feel anything about the man, really,” she said. “I thought I would use him, like he used me.”

Following Burns’s conviction Harry Dyke, Allerdale council’s director of customer services, said: “This verdict sends a clear message that Allerdale Borough Council will not tolerate benefit fraud.”

A spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions said it appeared that the jury accepted Burns’s explanation that she had lived with her four children as a single mother until after she got back together with her husband Leonard, 49, on a holiday to Thailand.

But he said it appeared the jury had rejected her claims that her husband had not moved back into the family home in Ismay Close after that holiday.