A CADDIE who claimed thousands in disability benefits while carrying the bags of rich golfers at one of Scotland's top golf courses is facing jail.
Robert Lothian claimed incapacity benefits while working as a caddie earning £45 a round plus tips at Kingsbarns Golf Links, near St Andrews.
The course is one of the most highly rated in Scotland and is regularly included in lists of the world's top 100 courses.
Lothian also claimed income support, housing benefit and council tax benefit over an eight-month period in 2011.
Along with Carnoustie and the St Andrews Old Course, Kingsbarns hosts the Dunhill Links Championship – which pairs celebrities with professionals.
Lothian, 49, of Cellardyke, Fife, had originally pled not guilty to three charges alleged to have been committed between April 6, 2010 and August 20, 2011.
Minutes before his trial he pled guilty to all three charges, amended to have taken place between January 2011 and August 2011.
A court source said: "He had originally been accused of taking over £10,000 in benefits. The actual sum taken is considerably less than that – but we are still talking about thousands of pounds taken illegally."
Sentencing was deferred until next month for background reports.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article