A Nigerian national Antoinette
Kaidi (L), along with her "sister" Louise Kaidi (R),
have been found guilty of 23 counts including fraud and dishonesty. They were
convicted of taking thousands of pounds from the NHS in training and bursary
costs. They also took false tax credit and income support payments from public
purse and scammed the UK government for 12-years using 'ghost identities'.
According to Dailymail, Hundreds of illegal
immigrants using fake identities are free to plunder millions in benefits after
the Home Office halted a major fraud investigation, it was claimed yesterday.
The claim came after the two final members of an African gang who pocketed more
than £8million in criminal benefits were jailed.
Antoinette and Louise
Kaidi lived in Britain under false names for 13 years and illegally made
£560,000 between them in a ‘very sophisticated’ scam. It included fraudulent
claims for housing benefit, income support, jobseekers allowance and student
bursaries.
They were tried under their ‘ghost identities’ as
their real names remain a mystery. They pleaded guilty mid-way through their
trial because their defence was so ‘risible’ the jury was ‘laughing’ at them,
Croydon Crown Court heard.
It ended a complex six-year investigation
involving multiple government departments, councils and employers that led to
21 people being convicted, including the gang’s masterminds. But a source
involved in the probe said there were many more suspected fraudsters connected
to the scam who had been allowed to get away with it.
The Kaidis spent 13
years using the identities of sisters from Togo in West Africa who applied for
asylum in the early 1990s but never pursued their claim. Louise is believed to be from Uganda and Antoinette is of mixed Nigerian-Ghanaian heritage. As well as pocketing huge sums in benefits, the
pair trained as nurses in their fake names, claiming generous state-funded NHS
student bursaries. Even Antoinette’s husband, with whom she has two children,
was unaware she had a fake name until her arrest, the court heard.
At trial the pair kept claiming to be from
French-speaking Togo. Antoinette said she was brought to Britain aged nine by
her mother who forced her to work as a slave in homes around London. But she
could not recall a single address where she was ‘enslaved’. She claimed her
mother paid for a private tutor to teach her English, explaining why she cannot
speak a word of French.
After belatedly pleading
guilty, the Kaidis admitted to 23 counts, from 2003 to 2015, including fraud,
conspiracy to assist in unlawful immigration and falsely obtaining benefits.
Judge John Tanzer jailed them for 33 months each.
You can imagine
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