A WOMAN of 64 pocketed £63,800 in unemployment benefits despite secretly working on a telephone sex line.

Samantha Knight chatted with customers on premium rate services whose providers boasted of paying workers up to £10.80 per hour.

She used the money to fund the upkeep of her 11 pet dogs and continued to receive benefits, despite officials twice contacting her to ask if she should still be claiming them.

Knight correctly began claiming benefits 15 years ago, Southampton crown court was told.

She began her sex line job soon afterwards, but told officials that her circumstances had not changed.

Knight, who the court heard has now sold her home near Southampton and plans to move to Sheffield, admitted fraud.

Judge Nicholas Rowland said as he jailed her for six months: “Fraud of this kind is bad enough. But to do it with the dog aspect of your life shows a flagrant disregard to the benefit system.”