Vice girl locked up for £45k benefits fraud

A mother of two who claimed more than £45,000 in benefits while earning some £100,000 as a vice girl in the Black Country has been jailed.

Blonde Kirstie Appleton was secretly paid around £20,000 a year by a wealthy married man called Frank, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard.

The unmarried 36-year-old from Dudley had regular sex sessions with him for five years. Appleton, from Parkes Hall Road, burst into tears as she was jailed for eight months by a judge.

She admitted three fraud charges and confessed in a basis of plea read to the court yesterday: "I befriended a wealthy married man called Frank from Bristol and started an affair.

"He used to meet me up to six times a month for sex and could be described as a escort client. Effectively I got paid for sexual services."

The payments into her bank varied from £50 to £1,500 between 2003 and 2009, an average of £20,000 a year.

Prosecutor Mr Charles Hamer said: "A sum of £103,000 was deposited in this way over a long period and the same amount was withdrawn.

"There was no pattern to the payments and they involved random amounts."

Appleton was also having £100 benefits regularly paid into the same Halifax account and the sec ret transactions were revealed when officials launched an investigation following a tip-off.

She was interviewed in May 2009 and initially claimed that she could "not understand" where the extra money had come from.

Mr John Evans defending, said Appleton "failed to even consider the implications of what was going on."

Judge Michael Dudley told Appleton: "It is very rare indeed for a judge to send a mother of young children to prison but completely the wrong message would go out to the community if I shirked my responsibility."