Chance photo spells jail for fraudulent cruising sailors

8:22 PM Sun 22 Mar 2009 GMT

'The cruising couple in happier times' .

A chance photo, taken by some other cruisers in an anchorage, has led to the jailing of a couple who lived from disabled benefits while sailing the world on a cruising yacht.

Shashi Bacheta, 52, and Jeffrey Cole, 58, admitted a total of 20 charges connected with the elaborate fraud, which was played out over almost five years.

For two years, the two sailed halfway round the world on their yacht, 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.

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.'

By the time they were caught, Bacheta had swindled her way to a series of benefits claiming she was too ill even to walk while she was scuba diving in Kenya and planning to carry on around the world on her lover's ?100,000 yacht, The Kismet.

She was given a 21-month prison sentence at Swansea Crown Court after the full details of the case were spelled out to a judge over a two-hour period.

Her lover, who was at the 'helm' of the con, was handed a nine-month jail term.

Judge Huw Davies QC gave Cole a shorter custodial sentence because of the smaller amount of just over ?13,000 he had jointly claimed with Bacheta over their criminal period.

He used an inheritance to buy the luxury yacht, which was the springboard for the couple's sailing trips from where it was moored in Gran Canaria.

Passing sentence, the judge told him: 'You were at the helm in a very real sense and set off to enjoy not only your own wealth but such money as you managed to get from public funds.'

by Nick Britten, Telegraph/Sail-World

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Chance photo spells jail for fraudulent cruising sailors

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