A former Gloucester county bowls president who cheated the state out of almost £60,000 in disability benefits while working as a pall bearer and taxi driver will have only £1 confiscated from him.

Prosecution and defence at Gloucester Crown Court agreed yesterday that although Leslie Webb, 61, obtained £59,798.42 by deception, he has no realisable assets.

The 61-year-old, of St Paul's Road, Gloucester, has spent all of his illegal gains and only a nominal figure of £1 could be confiscated from him under the Proceeds of Crime Act, said prosecutor Rebecca Dennis.

She said she and the police economic crime unit accepted, following an investigation into Webb's finances, that he has no assets which can be recovered.

Judge Martin Picton made an order for the confiscation of £1 – a legal move which means that, should Webb come into money in the future, even from a Pools or Lottery win, up to £59,798.42 could be seized.

The judge formally certified that the £59,000 sum was the amount by which Webb benefited from his crime.

Former BT engineer Webb had claimed for more than a decade that he was barely able to walk – yet he was regularly playing bowls as well as doing strenuous work.

He was able to carry coffins at funerals, drive long distances and walk half a mile up and down a bowls green when he played three times a week.

To get incapacity and disability allowance benefits he claimed he had difficulty lifting and carrying. He said it took him 20 minutes just to walk 50 yards.

Webb, who took early retirement from his BT job on health grounds 20 years ago, was given an 18-month jail term suspended for two years in June after being convicted in April of three charges of furnishing false information to the Department for Work and Pensions to claim disability living allowance and three charges of dishonestly making false representations to the department to claim incapacity benefit.

The charges covered the period 1994 to 2000 but the prosecution said he had been receiving benefits from 1986 up until 2005 when he was arrested and charged.

The special reasons the court found for not jailing Webb immediately were his medical problems – Crohn's Disease, vascular necrosis of the right femur which had led to a hip replacement, poor blood circulation, cervical spondylitis, depression, hypertension and osteoporosis, said the Recorder.

During Webb's trial the jury heard he had served twice as president of Gloucestershire Bowls Association during the time he was being paid benefits and he had no obvious physical problems playing matches up to three-and-a- half hours long.

One witness against him was former world bowls champion Tony Allcock, MBE, now President of the English Bowling Association.

In a statement, Mr Allcock said he never saw Webb have any difficulty playing bowls.

Webb did not use any walking aids on the bowls green and walked up and down the rinks at the same pace as other players, Mr Allcock stated.

In evidence, Webb said the work he did was "therapeutic" and he had declared it to the Department for Work and Pensions. He also claimed he played bowls on the advice of his Gloucester doctors – and he had developed a special way of bowling so he did not have to bend his back or legs.