A convicted rapist who won nearly £5 million on the lottery admitted fraudulently claiming around £13,000 in benefits on Tuesday.
Edward Putman pleaded guilty to two counts of benefit fraud when he appeared at St Albans Magistrates' Court in Hertfordshire.
The 47-year-old continued applying for housing benefit and income support after receiving his windfall in September 2009, even writing letters to the Department for Work and Pensions and his local council claiming he was broke and could not even afford to eat.
The court heard Putman began receiving income support in 2000 on the basis of his being incapacitated by anxiety issues.
In order to do so he needed proof from his doctor of his mental health problems and signed a document confirming that he would notify the authorities if his condition changed.
But when he failed to attend a medical check-up in 2009, his benefits were suspended, before being officially ended in April the following year.
In July 2010, 10 months after being made a millionaire by his lottery win, he wrote to the Department of Work and Pensions, begging them to reinstate his benefits.
He also wrote to Dacorum Borough Council saying that he had been forced to survive on handouts from his family and friends, and had not been able to pay his council tax or rent, apart from putting £200 towards it, which he had borrowed from his family.
The court heard that his benefits were then reinstated and were also back-dated, as he had asked them to be, to January 2010.
But the court heard that the authorities became suspicious when, that October, he went to the council asking if he could buy his council house under the right-to-buy scheme, telling them he had the £84,000 needed to buy it in cash.
Magistrates said the offences were too serious for sentencing under the powers available to them, and the case was committed to St Albans Crown Court on July 24.