Shoplifter claims it's impossible to live on benefits

A woman dubbed the world's most shameless shoplifter has admitted making almost £2 million from her thefts over the years, bringing in £50,000 a year at her peak.

Kim Farry, 54, says she started stealing as a youngster to try and help out her family and carried on for 44 years. She's been charged with shoplifting more than 50 times and has had seven spells in jail.

Now, though, the mother of six says she's a reformed character, in order to be a better role model for her 14-year-old daughter Paris.

In an interview with the Sunday People, she says she's been going straight for the last two months - although she says living on her benefits will be difficult.

"I will try but I'm going from riches to rags," she says. "Why would I give up living like an A-lister for this? This is the longest I've been without shoplifting since I was a child and it's unbelievably hard."

Ms Farry says she was just nine when she first started stealing in an attempt to help her mother look after her nine children.

"I used to nick a load of stuff then go and have a cuppa with the security guards, that's how good I was," she brags. "When I had been doing it for a few years I realised it was more about attitude than anything else. I could steal anything."

Later, she actually trained her three older children to help. The family was stealing items to order, and also selling goods on.

Ms Farry currently receives £120 every two weeks in disability living allowance (for stress), along with £20 a week in child benefit and £58 in child tax credits. But, she tells the paper, this isn't enough.

"I refuse to believe that anyone can live on the money provided by the government in benefits," she says. "The government is living in denial if it thinks people are going to live on benefits and not do everything they can to top it up, illegal or not."

Ms Farry isn't the only benefit claimant to feel entitled to rather more. We recently reported on Birmingham mother of eight Marie Buchan, who says the benefits cap will "force" her into work - and that last time she got a job it was impossible for her to manage because she couldn't get her children ready for school.

Shortly before, unemployed east Londoner Kamran Kam, 25, made headlines when he said that his fit body meant he deserved to be subsidised by the taxpayer.

It's cases like these that fuel the perception that all benefits claimants are scroungers. But research shows that the vast majority are genuinely keen to work - and Ms Farry is doing them all a disservice.

Read more on AOL Money:
Benefits cheats vs tax dodgers: who's worse?
'Agoraphobic' benefits cheat jailed
The benefit cheats who stole £4.5 million of your money