NRI woman with boyfriend sailed halfway around the world on yacht while claiming disability

 

London, February 25, 2009
Sudesh Sharma

NRI Shashi Bacheta, 52 and her boyfriend Jeffrey Cole, 58 sailed around the world on a £100,000 yacht, while she had claimed benefit fraud worth about £40,000 and Cole some £12,000.

• Shashi claimed she was so ill she had trouble getting out of bed and admitted 16 counts relating to benefit fraud
• Between October 2002 and January 2008 she claimed housing benefit, council tax relief, income support and disability living allowances. She had claimed to be unemployed and failed to declare she was living with Cole at his home in the Sketty area of the city or declare any of his assets.
• Cole admitted four charges and pleaded guilty to obtaining wrongful credits and false accounting
• They will be sentenced next month at Swansea Crown Court. He pretended to be her landlord when they were in fact living together, the court heard

Shashi Bacheta and Jeffrey Cole on board the £100,000 yacht Kismet

She had claimed to be unemployed and failed to declare she was living with Cole at his home in the Sketty area of the city or declare any of his assets. The investigators said she would go scuba diving.

Jeffrey Cole was the postmaster at Rheidol Avenue Post Office in Clase while she managed the newsagent side of the business. Fraud investigators said they were both members of the Swansea Yacht Club and would regularly holiday abroad. He helped her to obtain an extra 12,000 pounds in a benefit scam that ran from 2002 to 2008. His lawyer said he was in the process of selling the yacht. Judge Huw Davies QC agreed to postpone sentencing to allow probation officers time to prepare reports on their backgrounds. He granted them bail but told them releasing them was no indication of the sentence they would receive.

Both were arrested in January 2008.

Judge Davies said guidelines indicated a custodial sentence when they appear again next month.

Shashi Bacheta and Jeffrey Cole on board the yacht Kismet