Cake maker sponges from Child Support Agency
A baker who used an employee’s CSA deductions to support the business has been slapped with a hefty fine.
Barbara Heath, a partner in Auntie’s Handmade Cakes, based in Buckfastleigh, Devon, deducted money from the pay packet of baker Shawn Fell over 142 weeks at the behest of a DEO from the Child Support Agency. However, instead of paying the money direct to the Child Support Agency, as it was intended, the money was used to help prop up the business.
The scam was perpetrated for three years before investigators discovered it. Mr Fell’s Child Support Agency arrears stood at £8,002.55, but they found that despite deductions being taken at source, only £3,918 had been paid, leaving £4,084.06 unaccounted for. The CSA approached Ms Heath, 52, and uncovered the ruse.
Prosecuting on behalf of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, Martin Symonds told Torbay Magistrates:
“Investigators visited the proprietor and she accepted that she had taken the money from Mr Fells but had failed to pass it on to the Child Support Agency.”
“The CSA made a visit to Mr Fells and he confirmed that sums of money had been deducted from his pay.”
The court was told that the fraud was committed between August 2006 and June 2009.
Heath, from Kingskerswell, Newton Abbot, pleaded guilty to abusing her position in the business and acting against Fells.
Richard Porritt, representing Ms Heath, pointed out that she had not pilfered any money from the business and said:
“You have never met a more contrite or remorseful defendant before you in the courts.”
After the ruling, a spokesperson for the CSA commented:
“Tens of thousands of children depend on regular maintenance payment deducted for salaries.”
“Unscrupulous employers who deduct the money and then keep it themselves are cheating both the children and the parents.”
7 thoughts on “Cake maker sponges from Child Support Agency”
Leave a Reply
This spokesperson for the CSA. Are they God? If there is anybody cheating in this ‘flawed’ , ‘shambles’, it is the CSA staff and pathetic polticians, who are interfering between parents and children for the sake of the public purse, where parents have all ready paid into the system once via taxation, they are being taxed again. A disgrace!
CSA/CMEC should be shut down now! No better way to save money in this time of austerity than to get rid of incompetent, pen-pushing amateurs who think that they are doing good, but in actual fact they are doing more harm than good!
We don’t need an ‘out of control’ ‘failed’ quango to solve financial issues between parents. It can be done at the benefits office or at the courts, with both parents present with advisors, to sign a binding agreement, that also includes contact issues!
A guy posted on here a while ago stating that something similar had happend to him, expect in that case the CSA didnt care what his former employer had done they just wanted the money again from him.
Is some consistance from the CSA really to much to expect?
It was only a matter of time…how many more have done this, I wonder??
Why not thats what the CSA do, take off me give, give 20% to the ex if she is lucky and keep 80% for there consolidation fund!!
Just what I expect from CSA, they took 30% off my wage, gave my ex a percentage because she was on benefit, and kept the rest for themselves, how does my child benefit from this?
Because Allan, the CSA was created to offset the benefits bill, which I actually think WAS a good idea, because too many single mums were claiming benefits AND receiving maintenance. The country could no longer support this financially.However, now the rules have changed and PWCs can keep all their income support & maintenance..hardly seems to be much point in the CSA now, and we are no further forward when it comes to child poverty. In fact it's worse!!