Cruising couple arrested after two year scam

by Nick Britten, Telegraph/Sail-World on 25 Feb 2009 For two years, Jeffrey Coles and his partner Shashi Bacheta sailed halfway round the world on their yacht, sun-kissed and living the carefree life of a cruising sailor. Able to indulge in a passion for scuba diving, Bacheta and Coles occasionally docked their 66ft yacht the Kismet, meeting other cruising yachties and drawing admiring glances from passers-by. That was until they reached the Canary Islands

What the onlookers did not know was that the couple were funding their trip by illegally claiming more than £50,000 in Government benefits. And it was one such evening that was to prove their undoing, when they got chatting to two retired policemen in the Canary Islands who posted a photograph of them on an internet blog which eventually led to their downfall.

Yesterday, after admitting 20 charges of fraud and false accounting, they were warned by the courts that their next port of call was likely to be a jail cell.

While on their trip, Bacheta, 52, claimed for housing benefits, disability living allowances, council tax relief and income support in a series of scams. Coles, 58, chipped in, claiming an extra £12,000 by claiming to be her landlord when they were in fact living together.

Bacheta claimed she was so ill she couldn't even get out of bed - when in fact she was scuba diving off the coast of Kenya. She even kept a log of her diving exploits, which was later used as proof of her fraud.

A court heard while they were living it up in the 'lap of luxury' sailing around the Canaries, India and Atlantic, Bacheta was pretending to be seriously ill and unemployed.

Yet the pair had worked - Cole was a post master at a Post Office in Clase, Swansea, while he gave Bacheta a job managing the newsagent side of the business and Coles had bought the yacht legitimately with the proceeds of his job and properties he owned.

Their trip appeared to be going well until they docked in Gran Canaria. There they met two retired police officers, who were enjoying a similar round the world adventure. They got chatting and Bacheti and Coles happily posed for photographs, looking happy, relaxed and anything but ill and out of work.

The police officers, who were keeping a regularly-updated blog of their journey, posted the photo on the internet and unwittingly cracked the case.

Back in Swansea, fraud investigators at Swansea County Council were becoming increasingly suspicious of the pair. They began looking into them and soon established both were members of Swansea Yacht Club, but were struggling for firm evidence until, while doing an internet trawl for the Kismet yacht, they struck upon the blog and the photo.

Jeffrey Fish, an investigator for Swansea county council, said it proved a major breakthrough.

He said: 'They (the retired officers) had no idea they were a couple of benefits cheats. The photograph said it all.'

Bacheta, from Fforestfach, Swansea, admitted 16 charges of false accounting, fraud and deception between October 2002 and January 2008. They included claiming to be jobless and failing to declare she was living with Cole at his home and failing to declare any of his assets, including his yacht Kismet.

Coles, from Sketty, Swansea, pleaded guilty to four offences of obtaining wrongful credits and false accounting. Coles' barrister, Francis Jones, said he was selling the yacht.

Judge Huw Davies told the pair, who were released on bail, while background reports were prepared, that 'they should understand perfectly well' that sentencing guidelines in such cases indicated jail sentences.

The couple are expected to be sentenced next month.