Insurance fraud PCs found guilty
Two lesbian policewomen have been convicted of defrauding an insurance company after a crash by lying about which one of them was driving.
Diane Reeves-Emery, 38, claimed she was at the wheel when her lover, Charlotte Eccles, 23, hit the kerb in her car, causing £3,000-worth of damage.
The intention was to cut the excess charge to £250 from the £500 that Eccles would otherwise have had to pay because of her youth and inexperience.
At Stafford Crown Court, both women, who were employed by Derbyshire Constabulary, were found guilty of obtaining a financial advantage by deception.
Eccles claimed that she only went along with it because she was "petrified" of Reeves-Emery, who she claimed had been emotionally and physically abusive.
The court heard how they at first told insurers that Reeves-Emery had been driving, but that Eccles had later confessed that she had been at the wheel.
Reeves-Emery was also convicted of a second count of deception for not notifying her own insurers of the crash when she renewed her policy just days later.
The pair will be sentenced later.
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