LONDON (Reuters) - A couple who falsely claimed 43,000 pounds of welfare benefits while sailing around the world were jailed on Friday after their scam was revealed on an internet blog website.

Shashi Bacheta and Jeffrey Cole are seen in this undated handout photo. REUTERS/Handout/DWP

Shashi Bacheta, 52, was imprisoned for 21 months after admitting 16 counts of benefit cheating over a five-year period including fraudulently claiming housing and council tax benefit.

Her partner, Jeffrey Cole, 58, was given a 9-month sentence after admitting four charges including receiving cash by deception and false accounting.

Bacheta had claimed she was too ill even to walk while she was scuba diving in Kenya and planning further trips on Cole’s 100,000 pound yacht, “The Kismet.”

Their scheme was exposed when investigators from the Department for Work and Pensions working with Swansea Council found photos of the couple on the yacht on the internet blog site smugmug.com.

Bacheta had claimed she was living alone with her three children even though she had moved in with Cole in Swansea, the Press Association reported.

She also claimed for a disability allowance for mental problems and depression, later elaborating the fraud so she received the highest level of benefit, reserved for those housebound and unable to walk.

Judge Huw Davies at Swansea Crown Court told Bacheta she seemed to have made an application for “every form of benefit you considered it possible to make a false representation about.”

Cole, who owned a post office business and bought the yacht with an inheritance, was given a shorter sentence as he had claimed just 13,000 pounds of the benefit scam.

“You were at the helm in a very real sense and set off to enjoy not only your own wealth but such money as you managed to get from public funds,” Davies told him.

Bacheta’s 28-year-old daughter Anju was fined 500 pounds after admitting fraudulently several hundred pounds for being her mother’s carer.