A BENEFITS cheat who ripped off the taxpayer by almost £50,000 has escaped an immediate prison sentence – and been given 106 years to pay off her debt.

Mother of three Lee-Anne Jennings raked in the cash for about five years without telling authorities her husband had moved back in with her.

Now she is paying back her ill-gotten gains at just £9 a week – which at that rate would take 106 years.

Jennings, 42, legitimately began claiming for income support on the basis of being a single parent after her husband, Roy, left her in 2000.

Four years later they began living together but she failed to tell officials what had happened. Prosecutor Tim Moores said the deceit came to light following an anonymous tip-off and investigators for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) carried out a drive-by surveillance operation.

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They noticed a Nissan car regularly parked outside her house in Millbrook, Southampton, which was registered to her husband.

Further inquiries revealed he had been bringing home about £300 a week as a long distance lorry driver and after he had lost that job in October, 2008, he began working for a ship repair firm. Both employers had his address registered to Jennings’ home.

He was also paying for their TV licence and she had signed a loan application form in 2004 that showed they were living together. When questioned, she initially denied they had got back together and had genuinely split up.

But when confronted by the evidence, she admitted the fraud. Jennings, of Severn Road, admitted that between September 5, 2004 and October 22, 2009, she had failed to notify the DWP of a change of circumstances that would affect her income support entitlement.

Mr Moores revealed Jennings was paying back the deficit at £9 a week and he had been instructed not to make a compensation application because she did not have the means to pay.

Said to be of previous good character, Jennings received an 18-week suspended sentence coupled with 150 hours community service, in which she will work at a charity shop one day a week because of her poor health. Judge Derwin Hope said if he sent her to prison, her two younger children would have to go into care.

By failing to disclose the change of circumstances, he said she and her husband had taken money from genuine claimants, had undermined state assistance and had set a terrible example to her children. Kate Fortescue, defending, said Jennings had initially been reluctant to admit her offending because she was scared of the consequences.

The barrister described her husband as “a womaniser” who preferred independence to supporting his family. In 2000 she had had enough, he moved out and she made a genuine claim.

Though they were reconciled four years later, he used her home as “a correspondent’s address” and he came back from time to time.