Fraudster's girlfriend avoids jail
The girlfriend of an insurance scammer who staged "crash for cash" accidents has been spared jail for the sake of her nine-year-old son.
Ettorina Hay faced up to seven years in prison for benefiting from the proceeds of Mohammed Patel's fraud, but received a 12-month sentence suspended for two years instead.
Patel, 24, cost the insurance industry about £1.6 million by staging 93 road accidents at £500 a time in the three years to August 2008. He was jailed in October for four and a half years, and banned from driving for three and a half years.
Hay, who is originally from Malawi, was treated to expensive holidays and cars, including a £10,000 second-hand Mercedes C Class Coupe and a £14,000 Lincoln Navigator, which cost £3,700 to insure.
Much of the £46,000 Hay obtained went towards paying her household bills, visits to see her brother in South Africa and transforming her home in Kirkby Road, Bolton, into an "Aladdin's cave" of high-value goods. She admitted converting and possessing stolen property.
Judge Bernard Lever, sitting at Manchester's Minshull Street Crown Court, also ordered 29-year-old Hay to do 300 unpaid community service as she had benefited from Patel's scams.