He was already subject to a confiscation order of his own, and had already lost the family home to it. So he set up a consultancy - selling expert witness services to other criminals facing confiscation proceedings, helping them argue their assets were worth as little as possible.

There were no experts. Investigators could find no evidence that the reports were ever written, but the legal aid invoices kept going in, inflated and repeated. It was a double hit on the public purse: taking money out of the legal aid budget while helping other people hold onto money the courts were trying to recover. Then he was arrested for agreeing to take on cash for a drug trafficking network.

Also in this episode: a family in Somerset raising £50,000 for an operation the NHS wouldn't fund, and the two and a half weeks in London that followed; a man filmed playing two rounds of competition golf while claiming the highest rate of mobility benefit; and a 95-year-old too frightened to leave her room after a stroke, until a retired engineer built her something.

CHAPTERS
00:00 The serial scammers
02:00 The con man who sold his services to other criminals
10:11 A father, a son, and a £50,000 operation
24:41 Two rounds of golf, filmed from the hedge
32:33 Ninety-five, afraid of the stairs, and the volunteer who fixed it
39:08 Five years, and a £1.3 million bill

Saints and Scroungers follows the fraud investigators, council teams and HMRC officers tracking down the people stealing from the public purse - and meets the people who genuinely need that money, and the charities fighting to get it to them.

Saints and Scroungers, Series 6 Episode 10. Originally broadcast on BBC One.

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