A single mum-of-five has been warned she faces jail after she continued to claim benefits after scooping £75,000 on the lottery.
Rhona Black splurged her winnings over the course of a year, buying herself and her partner new cars and treating her children.
However the 35-year-old – who hasn’t worked in the last decade – failed to inform Aberdeen City Council and the Department of Work and Pensions (DoWP) about her windfall.
Between October 2010 and 2011, she fraudulently claimed a total of £5,400 in benefits.
Yesterday Black appeared at Aberdeen Sheriff Court to be sentenced having previously admitted committing the fraud.
Fiscal depute Sandy Hutchison told the sheriff that the charge against her was self explanatory but added “her troubles really started when she won £75,000 in the lottery and failed to declare it”.
Benefit claimers must declare any capital over £16,000 as savings may affect the sum of cash they are entitled to.
Representing Black, of 9 Auchinyell Terrace, Aberdeen, solicitor advocate Gail Goodfellow said her client had been scared to declare her winnings to the authorities as she thought they would take them away from her.
She said: “She began claiming benefits in 2004 when she was a single mum with her first child. Prior to that there had been sporadic employment but for most of the time since then she has been on benefits.
“Then she won £75,000 in the lottery in 2010. She accepts that she should have declared them money as capital and that there is no excuse for not doing so.
“But by way of explanation she has always struggled to make ends meet and she was trying to provide a little bit of luxury for her children and she was scared that if she declared her winnings it would be taken away from her.”
The court heard Black, who is paying back the benefits at a rate of £7.75 a week, was still in possession of one of the cars she bought with her winnings, which she claims she needs to take her children to school. The other one has been sold.
Mrs Goodfellow urged the sheriff to deal with her client without imposing a custodial sentence and said her crime had been at the “lower end of the scale”.
However, Sheriff Taylor said that he was seriously considering sending her to jail.
He said that if she wanted to avoid being locked up she should seriously consider selling the car in order to repay the illicit cash.
Black will return to court later this month.