A BENEFIT cheat who stole nearly £30,000 has been given a suspended sentence.

Karen O'Rourke, aged 43, of Arlington Drive, Penketh, wrongly claimed £23,900 in income support and £5,000 in council tax benefit between 1996 and 2001.

She had claimed and received income support as a lone parent since August 1995, Warrington Crown Court heard on Friday.

Naming her children as her dependants, O'Rourke said she was a single parent with no other form of income.

Under benefit rules she was required to report any change in her circumstances.

From October 1996 she failed to declare that her husband Steven O'Rourke had moved back into her family home.

Sobbing loudly throughout the case, O'Rourke had pleaded guilty to the offences, in February.

Judge Thomas Teague said that there was no evidence that she had used the money to fund any high living'.

He said: "The money involved is great but it is support over a considerable amount of time, so it is probably quite a mediocre amount over a weekly basis.

"This is not a case where she set out to defraud the department, because it was originally a legitimate claim.

"My estimation of this is that she buried her head in the sand, albeit dishonestly.

"There is no evidence that this has been spent on anything other than the family budget."

The court heard that O'Rourke has already begun to repay the money, and her barrister, Jack Roberts, said that she was extremely remorseful'.

He said she was a woman of previous good character, who suffers from illnesses, including stress and anxiety, and her son, who has epilepsy, needs a lot of supervision.

O'Rourke received a suspended sentence of 12 months, reduced to eight months, for her guilty plea, suspended for a year, with a community supervision requirement of six months.