An agent and her sister who embarked on a scam to fraudulently claim housing benefit have been ordered to repay the money and do unpaid community work.

The agent, Lara Barrett, 31, has been sacked from her job at Wright Manley (now Wright Marshall) in Crewe. She had forged tenancy agreements, faking a colleague’s signature on the paperwork.

South Cheshire magistrates heard that Barrett used her position to assist her sister Leanda to claim more than £1,000 in benefits by supplying her with counterfeit tenancy agreements.

The sisters both pleaded guilty to fraud.

Magistrates heard that Lara Barrett produced three fake tenancy agreements while working for her agency employers. She used one of these to attempt to claim housing benefit from Cheshire East Council.

The other two counterfeit forms she provided to her sister, Leanda, in order allow her to claim more than £1,000 in housing benefit.

Cheshire East Council’s benefit fraud investigation team uncovered the fraud during a probe into a discrepancy in the information provided for the benefit claims.

These investigations also discovered that Lara Barrett had forged one of her firm’s employee’s signatures to draw up the fake tenancy agreements.

At court, Lara Barrett admitted three offences of fraudulently drawing-up tenancies. Leanda Barrett admitted one offence of fraudulently claiming benefits by false representation.

Both were sentenced to a 12-month community order, which will involve them each doing 40 hours’ unpaid work. Magistrates also ordered the pair to each pay £200 prosecution costs and £60 victim’s surcharge each and repay to the council the fraudulently-obtained benefit money.

Sentencing magistrates reminded the pair that failure to comply with the courts order could result in them being jailed.

After the case, Cheshire East Council council said it would like to thank Wright Manley (now Wright Marshall) for their “considerable assistance” in both the investigation and in identifying the extent of the criminality undertaken.

Councillor Peter Raynes, cabinet member in charge of finance, said: “This is a shameful case of two people deliberately setting out to defraud the public purse. Benefit fraud is plain wrong and will not be tolerated by this council.”