Ex-owner of million pound property charged with benefit fraud

44-year-old didn't declare five bank accounts

A Sulby man who owned property worth a million pounds wrongly claimed tens of thousands of pounds in benefits, a court’s heard.

Forty-four-year-old Darren Shafik-Mikael of Carrick Park appeared before magistrates at Douglas courthouse.

At an earlier hearing, he’d pleaded guilty to one charge of failing to inform officials of a change in his circumstances as well as four of making false representations to obtain benefits.

Prosecution advocate Roger Kane told the hearing Shafik-Mikael has claimed income support and jobseeker’s allowance over the two-year period starting in 2018.

Magistrates heard he hadn’t declared five bank accounts, a wealth management fund or two homes in America and Ireland.

Mr Kane said the two undeclared properties were worth a total of £570,000.

Defence advocate Laurence Vaughan-Williams told the court Shafik-Mikael had intended to give the Irish property to his ex-wife in a divorce settlement, and the American property had been conned out of him for just $100.

Magistrates said Shafik-Mikael would have known what he was doing was wrong, and imprisoned him for a total of six weeks.