The dinner lady's secret: She had two homes and falsely claimed £70,000 in benefits

As a school dinner lady, Ruth Morrison would often join colleagues in the canteen as they moaned about their low pay.

But the mother of two was a lot better off than she let on.

Over five years, she had raked in £70,000 by falsely claiming benefits.

And when investigators caught up with her, they discovered that Morrison was not just claiming benefits while working.

The 35-year-old had also kept secret her second home, which had spectacular views of the Bristol Channel.

Morrison started claiming housing benefit, income support and council tax benefit in 2000.

Inspectors realised that she was committing fraud only when records proved she was working and claiming the cash between 2000 and 2005, a source close to the investigation said.

But Morrison had little need of the money, it seems. In the months before she was caught out, she sold her property in Ilfracombe, Devon, which she had inherited from her grandmother, for £120,000.

She used £115,000 of the money to upgrade her home in London, moving out of her shabby house in a predominately working-class area of Harrow, into a first-floor flat in a more upmarket area.

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There she lived comfortably with her husband Mark, a postman, 34, and her daughters, until she was summoned to court on benefit fraud charges in November.

Morrison, who worked at Weald First School, wept at Harrow Crown Court, as she was jailed for 15 months.

She had admitted falsely claiming £70,000 in benefits. Her ill-gotten gains included housing benefit payments of £46,622, council tax benefits of £3,379 and £21,320 in income support.

The source said: "When we started to delve deeper into her financial affairs, we found that this was the tip of the iceberg. At first the investigation team thought this was a simple case of a woman working and claiming benefits at the same time.

"But after scouring Land Registry records, we discovered she had inherited a second home which she failed to declare. This made her crime far worse and it was probably one of the reasons why the judge gave her a custodial sentence."

In July, a court will consider confiscating Morrison's assets. Her husband was not charged with any offences.