THE former owner of a residential home has been jailed for 18 months after pleading guilty to illegally claiming benefits for his residents including some who had died.

Michael Harry Bovensiepen, 46, of Rupert Road, Ilkley, had pleaded guilty to 69 counts of obtaining money by deception and false accounting amounting to more than £85,000 when he appeared in Court in July.

At Leeds Crown Court on Monday he pleaded guilty to another four counts of forging documents, but denied another four allegations of using the forged instruments to obtain loans from various banks.

Prosecuting, Colin Harvey, said between 1991 and 1998 Bovensiepen, who formerly co-owned Cromwell's Nursing Home and Thornton Hill Residential Home both in Thornton-in-Craven, near Skipton, used the patients in his care to claim illegal benefits.

He said he defrauded the state by claiming the higher benefit awarded for nursing care for residents who did not need it.

Mr Harvey said when inspectors were to visit the home Bovensiepen moved a number of patients from the residential home to the nursing home to try to hide the discrepancies.

Bovensiepen, who secured an £80,000 salary, also continued to claim benefits for residents after they had died.

Mr Harvey said the defendant managed to facilitate the claims by setting up a system whereby he could cash in money at the post office on behalf of elderly, infirm or frail residents. The more recent forgery charges were committed while Bovensiepen was on bail from Bradford Crown Court awaiting sentence on the benefit fraud.

Mr Harvey said the defendant had visited an accountant in Ilkley to discuss buying Home Croft Residential Home in Ilkley. Having met the accountant Bovensiepen created his own documents and accounts using the accountant's name and generating paperwork on a home computer to assimilate that of the accountants.

"He was thwarted by the due diligence of others," said Mr Harvey.

Employees at the banks where Bovensiepen had submitted the papers to try to obtain the loan had queried the

application.

Mitigating Sean Morris said Bovensiepen had always lived in the shadow of his brother Robert and he just wanted to make his new business a success.

But when the nursing home business got up and running it became too much for him.

"It has taken all this to come crashing down for Michael Bovensiepen to realise he is not a Robert Bovensiepen. He was out of his league," he said.

Mr Morris said Bovensiepen had already tried to take his own life once and most of the money he had falsely claimed went back into the nursing home maintenance.

Judge Peter Armstrong sentenced Bovensiepen to 18 months imprisonment for each offence to run concurrently.

He said: "You have no previous convictions and you are 46-years-old. It is very sad when someone in that position has to be sent to prison but I am afraid that is the position today."