77. Former Mayor John McGowan.


(2008) A former mayor who was caught playing golf and doing a paper round while claiming £13,000 in benefits for a bad back has escaped a prison sentence. John McGowan, 54, of Clitheroe, Lancashire, received a 36-week jail term, suspended for 12 months. Preston Crown Court heard he was overpaid £13,114 in disability allowance from April 2004 and September 2006. During that time he was secretly filmed by fraud investigators on the fairways at Stoneyhurst Golf Club, near Clitheroe, where he was seen pulling his trolley up steep slopes. Sentencing him, Judge Beverley Lunt said: "These offences were a dishonest detraction of taxpayers' money. http://tinyurl.com/2y2nul

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