All over £3 a week How one woman fell victim

Karina Moon vividly reacalls the telephone call that brought her to tears. She was standing, frozen, in the living room of her home in north Wales as a government official told her she needed to repay £11,292.75 or be prosecuted for fraud.

- Josh Halliday

"I broke down. I was crying," she said. "I was gobsmacked. I was absolutely distraught because I live within the law. They made me feel like I was defrauding it." The phone call that came out of the blue was all the more shocking because Moon, 62, is completely on top of her finances. She keeps payslips going back years, carefully scrutinises the small print of benefits entitlements and can, in her own words, "budget like there's no tomorrow".

Yet Moon, like tens of thousands of others, had fallen victim to the carer's allowance trap.

A single mother, Moon is the sole carer most of the week for her daughter, a bright and bubbly 22-year-old who has a rare genetic condition called Bardet-Biedl syndrome. She is on the autistic spectrum, has type two diabetes and is registered blind, and needs constant care. "I do everything for her," said Moon.