Benefits cheat who claimed PIP for her MS while running 10K races deletes her 'ex-prisoner' TikTok on life inside after being told to pay back £22,000

Daily Mail​

03-06-2025

A benefits cheat mother who has been ordered to pay back £22,000 has deleted her TikTok account where she shared her experience of life behind bars.
Sara Morris, 50, competed in more than 70 running events while exaggerating her Multiple Sclerosis (MS) diagnosis to claim Personal Independence Payment (PIP).
She was diagnosed with MS in 2005 but in 2020 she started to lie about the severity of her MS and said it made her so anxious that a trip to the pharmacy to collect her medication left her in tears.
An investigation uncovered that Morris competed in 73 races between May 2019 and December 2022 while she was overpaid £20,528.83 between October 20, 2020 and April 25, 2023.
Morris, from Stone in Staffordshire, pleaded guilty to dishonestly making a false statement to obtain a benefit last July after the lying mother was caught out by her own Facebook posts of her running.
However, despite being sentenced to 8 months, Morris only ended up serving nine weeks in prison.
After serving around just a quarter of her sentence, she took to TikTok through the now-deleted account @sara.exprisoner to share her journey in jail.
She spoke of the condition of her room, the quality of the food, being on the receiving end of bullying and a 'strange' letter sent to her in the post.
'I had lots of things sent to me. Most of the stuff that came through was allowed,' she said.
'There was a few bits and pieces that were screened and taken away.
'One actually included something really really strange which is a funny story.
'So I had some post sent to me that I didn't know about until my leaving day. I was handed a bag with an envelope in it and a tag attached to it which said "contains teeth".
'Now this is a bit odd. I thought to myself, no one is going to be sending me teeth!
'But what had actually happened is someone had written me a letter, quickly grabbed an envelope out of their cupboard and the envelope had contained some baby teeth that they'd saved for a very, very long time and they just put the letter inside this envelope and sent it straight off without thinking.'
Her videos had tens of thousands of views but some took to the comments to point out the amount of time she spent behind bars.
One wrote '9 nine weeks' next a number of laughing emojis while another added 'that's not prison time'.
She served her time after Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court heard that she failed to mention to the Department for Works and Pensions (DWP) though that she was in fact a member of the Stone Master Marathoners and regularly ran 5km and 10km races.
She began claiming around £2,300 a month in Personal Independence Payment (PIP) after saying the severity of her progressive disease had left her unable to stand at the cooker.
She also claimed she lacked balance and was unable to get out of her bath unassisted.
Now this week, Morris reappeared at the same court for a Proceeds of Crime hearing.
Judge Graeme Smith was told Morris benefited from her criminality by £22,386.02 and the available amount was £60,000.
He ordered Morris to repay £22,386.02 within 28 days or serve nine months in prison in default.
In the series of TikTok videos, she also spoke of a 'terrifying' moment she was continually confronted by the same woman while inside.
She said: 'This particular woman started with intimidation on the exercise yard in the mornings.
'She would sit there and stare at me and try to keep my gaze locked. But I'm quite stubborn so I ignored her for the whole.
'This started to escalate and I had to mention it to the officers because she started running a finger up the back of my leg as I was walking past her.
'The officer said don't worry about it, we're keeping an eye on her and it's just your turn. I felt safe. It felt like it was okay.
'She started to make comments on the stairs. She was very intimidating to have to walk past. It was like being at school.
'The first big incident that came was in a long, thin corridor.
'I came out of the servery with my little blue plate, walked towards the staircase where I would go to the first floor where my room was and this woman came straight towards me and as soon as I saw her face I thought "oh no, I'm in trouble here".
'She looked directly at me, then she looked at the plate and she put her hand underneath the plate and slapped my dinner all over me. It was terrifying.
'So a few days before I left one of the officers just wanted to say goodbye. I'd been to get my lunch.
'I put my lunch down on the sink and carried on talking to the officer. She got up from behind us on a chair that she was sitting on.
'She grabbed my lunch off the sink and threw it. At least she didn't throw it at me I thought.'
Morris also spoke of the 'limited' food menu describing some of the meals as being a 'bit ropey'.
'You do get a choice. The menu is quite limited but it's a rolling menu that goes over so many weeks.
'You get to choose on a form. Some of the choices are quite good. I'm quite a healthy eater and I was even more healthy while I was inside.
'Some of the options are a bit ropey. You get lots and lots of double carbs. You would eat things like rice with a side portion of potatoes.
'One that did really make laugh was on a Thursday. It was a ploughman's lunch. I thought this was great.
'I wasn't expecting much don't get me wrong. I went to pick it up and it was actually a box of salad and a piece of cheese and a pot of pickle. And that was it.
'Sunday lunches were normally pretty good. The portion sizes are pretty big when you go to the servery. Things like crisps you would only maybe get once or twice a week.'
Speaking about her prison cell, she described it as 'more like a dormitory rather than a grey metal cell'.
She said the furniture was 'cheaply made with plyboard' and that the 'awful' matress was 'really, really hard'.
'The pillows are sort of doable,' she continued.
'There was enough storage for basic sort of clothes.'
'I had a shelf for my bits and pieces and a safe that you're supposed to keep things like your medication in and anything that you don't want to get pinched out of your room.
'Unfortunately mine didn't have a key.'
MailOnline has approached Morris following the TikTok account being taken down.