Man jailed after claiming dead father’s £90k pension

A man has been jailed for claiming his dead father’s state pension for more than two decades.

William Seal died in 1989, aged 83, but his son, David, told various Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) officials he was alive but abroad or ill, the Daily Mirror reported.

Seal, 78, claimed his father's pension for 21 years, collecting £90,000 in payments, first by using the old-style cash books and then by setting up a bank account in his father's name in 1995.

DWP staff began attempting to contact William Seal in 2003 and finally made a visit to his son's flat in Wirral this year, when Seal Snr would have been 104.

Seal was given a year-long prison sentence after Judge Robert Warnock at Liverpool Crown Court said he would be lenient given the defendant's old age.