ziplining.<\/a> She had also visited Thorpe Park, a popular adventure park in the UK, on three occasions.<\/p>\nDuring this time, she had been receiving tens of thousands of pounds in Personal Independence Payment (PIP), a UK benefit designed to help people with long-term health conditions or disabilities manage the extra costs of daily living.<\/p>\n
\u2018I didn\u2019t realise you\u2019re not allowed to leave your house\u2019<\/p>\n
She had allegedly spent the money on manicures, tanning treatments and visits to a private dentist.<\/p>\n
When officials enquired about her financial records, she told investigators: \u201cI didn\u2019t realise you\u2019re not allowed to leave your house\u201d, a DWP official was quoted as saying by The Independent.<\/p>\n
Despite claiming that she was too unwell to carry out even basic daily tasks such as household chores, records showed Wieland attended 76 beauty appointments, visited around 60 pubs, clubs and restaurants, and made purchases in foreign currencies.<\/p>\n
Following her holiday to Mexico, she submitted a review stating that her condition had deteriorated.<\/p>\n
Wieland later admitted failing to report a change in her circumstances and has been ordered to repay \u00a323,662, which she unlawfully received between 2021 and 2024.<\/p>\n
\u2018An insult to every hardworking taxpayer\u2019<\/p>\n
She was sentenced on Thursday to 28 weeks in custody, suspended for 18 months, the DWP confirmed.<\/p>\n
Andrew Western, a minister at the DWP, said: \u201cThis is an insult to every hardworking taxpayer and to people who genuinely depend on Pip.<\/p>\n
\u201cWieland lied repeatedly, milked the system for every penny she could get and then had the nerve to claim her condition was worsening while she was ziplining and surfing in Mexico.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are committed to finding those who try to defraud taxpayers, and they will face the consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman has landed in hot water after fraudulently claiming more than \u00a323,000 (about \u20b929 lakh) in disability…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":560876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[738,248536,97,259,260,17958,95528,169534,1306,10623,248537],"class_list":{"0":"post-560875","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-disability-benefits","9":"tag-fraudulently-claiming","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth","13":"tag-news-today","14":"tag-personal-independence-payment","15":"tag-severe-anxiety","16":"tag-trending-news","17":"tag-viral-news","18":"tag-ziplining-in-mexico"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=560875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/560876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=560875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=560875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=560875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}