Ex-Blair Bodyguard Jailed For Benefits Fraud

A former bodyguard to Tony Blair has been jailed for conning £50,000 in benefits to help fund an extravagant lifestyle including foreign holidays and private school for his children.

Vaughan Dodds, who was a police protection officer for the ex-Labour Prime Minister, claimed his and his wife's illnesses had left them severely incapacitated.

The 45-year-old said he had been unable to leave the house because of the medical condition ME, or chronic fatigue syndrome, and could only walk for a short time before experiencing great discomfort.

In benefit claim forms he said he had difficulty making meals and needed help getting out of bed.

As an appointee for his wife Mandy, Dodds also dealt with her benefits.

He claimed her illness had left her highly sensitive to sound, and the "crackling of the bed sheets or the pillow can not only awaken her but cause pain".

Even the sound of toilet tissue being ripped was too much for her to cope with, he said.

However, an investigation revealed the couple enjoyed numerous holidays, splashed out almost £35,000 on health and beauty salons, spent thousands on hotels and restaurants and paid for their son and a daughter to be privately educated.

Secret footage showed them both working out in the gym, while there were pictures of them on holiday riding a camel and larking about in a cruise ship cabin.

Graham O'Sullivan, prosecuting, told the trial at Teesside Crown Court: "The prosecution make no bones about it. We say this money was dishonestly obtained.

"We say it was used by Mr Dodds and his wife to fund a comfortable lifestyle - a lifestyle this couple could not otherwise have afforded."

Mr O'Sullivan told the jury the former officer with Durham Police was left £250,000 in his father's will in 2007, and his £160,000 house in Spennymoor, County Durham.

Dodds was convicted of nine charges of dishonestly claiming more than £55,000 between April 2005 and December 2009.

Sentencing him to two-and-a-half years in prison, Judge Graham Cook said the case was "made far worse by the fact you were a serving police officer and the public expect more of a serving officer or a former officer because you more than most know the difference between right and wrong".

Nigel Soppitt, defending, had argued prison would be a "bleak and stark place" for a former officer where he would be left vulnerable.

He described him as a "broken man" and said he was "deeply, deeply sorry" for what he had done.

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: "Only a small minority of benefit claimants are dishonest, but cases like this show how we are rooting out the unscrupulous minority who are cheating the system and diverting taxpayers' money from those who really need it."