A prolific Huddersfield fraudster who was jailed for four years for “persistent and focused dishonesty” today lost a Court of Appeal bid for a shorter jail term.
Malcolm Leslie Forsyth, 62, of Lightridge Road, Fixby, pocketed thousands of pounds from benefit and property frauds after spinning a “web of deceit”.
His crimes went back as far as 1985 when he first set up a bank account using a false identity and continued until 2014.
He wrongly obtained a £113,000 mortgage in a false name and pocketed over £70,000 in wrongly claimed benefits.
His crimes included claiming he was a tenant of his own house to get housing benefit.
In November last year, he was finally jailed for four years at Leeds Crown Court for 15 offences of fraud and deception.
Today, he took his case to the Court of Appeal in London in a bid to have the “manifestly excessive” sentence cut.
But Mr Justice Turner, sitting today with Lady Justice Hallett and Mrs Justice McGowan, said his bid to appeal was “unarguable”.
“He perpetrated a web of deceit for a very long time,” said the appeal judge.
“He displayed a staggering amount of dishonesty.
“It cannot be said that a sentence of four years’ imprisonment did not reflect the totality of the offending.”
The sentence was upheld.
