While claiming to be too ill to leave her bed, Shashi Bacheta was actually on a two-year yacht trip with her boyfriend Jeffrey Cole, financed in part by $70,000 in taxpayer money, said British authorities this week. Bacheta used her fictional disability to claim housing benefits, council tax relief, income support and disability living allowances.
The scammers were discovered after befriending two former police officers in the Canary Islands and inviting them onboard Cole's luxury yacht, named Kismet. The officers later posted photographs of their new friends on a blog, which were discovered by fraud investigators. The investigators had long been suspicious of Bacheta and were scouring the internet for any reference to Kismet.
Bacheta and Cole both now face jail sentences for their offenses. Bacheta has plead guilty to 16 counts of false accounting, fraud and deception, while Cole pleaded guilty to four offences of obtaining wrongful credits and false accounting. Bacheta's 28-year-old daughter will also be charged for helping her mother commit fraud.
