Insurance firm fraudster Susan Pain faked Manchester Arena attack daughter to make insurance claim

She was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court to two years in prison for two counts of fraud.

Pain, 51, from Kirkby, Merseyside, was caught after her final claim, in which she said she had a daughter named Sophie who had sustained serious injuries in the arena attack on 22 May last year.

Twenty-two people died, including Scots teenager Eilidh MacLeod (below) after Islamist terrorist Salman Abedi detonated a homemade bomb as people were leaving Manchester Arena following a concert by American singer Ariana Grande.

Abedi also died in the attack, which was the first suicide bombing in Britain since the July 2005 London atrocities.

Police said Pain, a director of insurance broker Money Medical Management - which sold policies underwritten by AXA - since she was 16, had no children, but made claims related to children she invented.

Prosecutors said Pain, whose job involved providing insurance for medical professionals to cover unexpected loss of earnings, used her inside knowledge of the industry to make fraudulent claims.

Judge Alan Conrad QC said the public would be "shocked" that Pain used "a tragedy which shook the nation as the basis for a fraudulent claim".

During the period between January 2010 and August 2017, she made claims under the names of friends and family members.

In one claim, she said her friend's seven-year-old son had leukaemia, while another said her niece's elderly mother was housebound after a fall.

Police said she had also made claims for jury service and maternity leave and she forged medical and court documents to substantiate them.

The fraud came to light when Pain pretended she was a dentist and claimed her "daughter Sophie" had had two major operations after sustaining serious injuries in the Arena attack in May 2017.

AXA could not trace a victim with her daughter's name and discovered discrepancies with Pain's previous claims, said the CPS.

Judge Conrad told her: "In some cases you used false documents in support of claims and such was the trust in which you were held they were never challenged."

Michael Bagley, defending Palin, said the defendant was still in debt, despite the fraudulent claims.

"How she got to this point is still fundamentally difficult to understand," he said.

He added that her greatest punishment would be "social ruin".

Detective Constable Ant Andrews, of City of London Police's Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department, which investigated the claims, said Pain "exploited the tragic terror attack" to make a financial gain.

"She is now paying a significant price for her fraudulent activity," he said.

Carolyn Scott, head of household and lifestyle at AXA Insurance, said: “Ms Pain took advantage of a position of trust to deceive her employer and defraud AXA. She used details of extremely upsetting events and circumstances to make fraudulent claims for her own personal gain.”