A married couple who pleaded guilty to insurance fraud were convicted at Nottingham Crown Court yesterday (Thursday December 8).
David Sweetman, 53, and Lesley Sweetman, 48, from the Clifton Estate, Nottingham, submitted 32 fraudulent medical claims where they professed to have life threatening illnesses, allowing them to make more than £17,000.
The couple who made 32 fraudulent insurance claims between October 2005 and February 2015 have been sentenced to 40 weeks imprisonment (suspended for 2 years) and 8 weeks imprisonment (suspended for 2 years) respectively.
This was found following an investigation by detectives from the City of London Police’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department (IFED).
They had every intention of making money out of crime
Detective Mike Monkton from the department said: “The couple claimed to have serious and potentially life threatening injuries when in fact they were not in hospital at all.
“Their efforts to claim from their insurance company were calculated and this shows that they had every intention of making money out of crime.
“This case shows that ultimately it does not pay to commit insurance fraud.
“The Sweetmans thought they were going to profit indefinitely from their claims but they are now are in a position where they have a criminal conviction.
“The successful outcome of the case is an example of how the insurance industry can work together to effectively prosecute insurance fraudsters and bring them to justice.”
The Sweetmans started to submit claims to their health insurance provider in 2005 and both claimed to have spent long periods of time in hospital being treated for serious illnesses.
One claim saw Lesley Sweetman claim that she was being treated for a stroke and David Sweetman also made claims for illnesses such as pre-haptic jaundice and ulceration colitis.
The couple would use fake signatures to sign-off the medical documents and authorised them using a stamp that they had designed on their computer.
When the health insurance provider audited the Sweetmans’ claims in 2015, they found out from the hospitals that 32 out of the 34 claims made by the Sweetmans were fraudulent.
The provider wrote to them asking them to pay the money back, to which Lesley Sweetman responded and asked if they could pay back the money in small instalments as they wouldn’t be able to pay back the money in full.
It was this point that the provider passed the case to IFED for investigation.
