A BENEFIT cheat who repaid £8,000 too much may not get it back, a court was told yesterday.

Mother-of-two Marilyn Woodhead, 52, was sent a claim for £16,000 by the Department of Social Security to recover money she falsely collected over seven years.

She borrowed the money and sent it off, but then the department said that she was entitled to half the £16,000 in benefits.

Woodhead's barrister, Roy Mitchell, told Teesside Crown Court: "It is unlikely that she will have much success in getting the overpayment back."

Woodhead failed to declare that she was receiving a Gas Board pension for her late husband when she applied for Income Support, in June 1995.

She was challenged by investigators last year when she admitted: "I've been wanting to tell the department many a time but I've been frightened.

"I thought when UI (unemployment insurance) applied that if I tell them about the pension I would not get anything. But I knew it was the wrong thing to do."

Roger Moore, prosecuting, said that the total was £16,595.98 in Income Support and Jobseeker's Allowance. But about 50 per cent would have been paid to her any- way.

Recorder William Hirst, told her: "The serious aspect of your case is that when you first went to apply for State Benefit that you deliberately chose to hide from them that you were receiving a pension, so it was a deliberate fraud carried on that way."

Woodhead of Jameson Road, Hartlepool, was ordered to do 120 hours community punishment after she pleaded guilty to eight specimen charges of making false applications to obtain benefits between 1995 and last year.