Romanian fraudsters use trafficked babies and children for multi-million pound UK benefit scam

Babies and young children are being trafficked into Britain by foreign criminals and used to make fraudulent benefits claims, an investigation has found.

Forged immigration documents and employment records are used in the multi-million pound scam.

In many cases the children are taken from families with the knowledge of their parents, the probe found.

Trafficked: Gypsy children in the Romanian town of Tandarei, which has been linked to fraudulent benefit claims in the UK

They are trained in street crime and placed with unrelated adults to enable fake benefit claims to be paid into accounts controlled by the trafficker, according to the Sunday Times

A special team set up to investigate the problem in London has identified 119 potential child trafficking victims in the capital with more than 1,500 convictions between them.

Operation Golf is a Metropolitan Police investigation into a Romanian crime network believed to control a human trafficking ring.

Some of the suspects can be traced to a town in Tandarei which has a large Roma gypsy population.

Over the past five years, the town has prospered with an emerging class of 'nouveau riche' gypsies.

A Daily Mail investigation last year found Tanderei transformed from a village where horses and carts were the only form of transportation to a place of expensive cars and glitzy mansions.

Earlier this month four suspected child victims of trafficking from Romania were taken into foster care as part of a Met swoop.

More than 20 addresses in Westminster, Enfield, Haringey and Redbridge were visited and evidence of benefit crime in excess of £100,000 was found, the force said.

Fraudulent claims for housing benefit, tax credits and child benefit supplement revenue from other criminal activities such as ATM fraud, pickpocketing and shoplifting.

Anthony Steen MP, chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on trafficking of women and children, told the Sunday Times: 'This is an appalling scandal of desperately poor people being trafficked here to siphon off money from the benefits system. The current checks are totally inadequate and there needs to be an EU-wide response.

'HM Revenue & Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions need to get a grip.'

A spokesman for the HMRC said any type of fraud was taken 'extremely seriously' and there were a range of checks in place throughout the period of the claim including checking authenticity of documents.

'All tax credit claims are subject to the same risk assessment regardless of the nationality of the claimant or claimants and if fraud is suspected payment is stopped,' he said.

'In the most serious cases prosecutions for the criminal offence of tax credit fraud will be considered. continues here

Benefit fraud pair sent to jail

A couple who sailed part way around the world on a £100,000 yacht while claiming benefits have been jailed.

Shashi Bacheta, 52, was sentenced to 21 months at Swansea Crown Court, while Jeffrey Cole received nine months.

Bacheta, of Swansea, admitted 16 counts relating to benefit and Cole, 58, admitted four charges which were together worth about £43,000.

It was found, despite claims Bacheta struggled to get out of bed because of an illness, that she went scuba diving.

Swansea Crown Court heard that at various times between October 2002 and January 2008 she claimed housing benefit, council tax relief, income support and disability living allowances.

She claimed to be unemployed and failed to declare she was living with Cole at his home in the Sketty area of Swansea or declare any of his assets.

These included his yacht Kismet.

The court heard that mother-of-two Bacheta was paid disability living allowance, council tax benefit and housing benefit while cruising around the Canary Islands on the Kismet.

Cole pleaded guilty to four offences of obtaining wrongful credits and false accounting.

Judge Huw Davies told Bacheta: "You were in perfectly good health and took active holidays to travel so much of the world.

"You went on safari and sailing the seas in a private yacht.

"You were guilty of a set of cynical offences of defrauding the benefit system.

"You started off making applications for housing and council tax benefit. You went on to make application for any benefit you considered it possible to make.

"There was a degree of sophistication in what you did. You sought to get round the checks as a challenge to your ingenuity."

Gran Canaria

The judge said the pair had been living together for five years and "taking holidays in some considerable style".

He told Cole: "You bought a yacht for £100,000 having sold some of your properties. You set off to enjoy your personal wealth and money extracted from public funds."

Swansea Crown Court heard the couple were caught after posing for photographs while their yacht was moored in Gran Canaria.

Two retired police officers, enjoying a similar around-the-world adventure, snapped the couple before posting the pictures on their blog.

Fraud investigators, who had become suspicious of the pair, discovered the blog while searching on the internet for the Kismet.

At an earlier hearing, the court was told that Cole pretended to be her landlord when they were in fact living together.

Ian Wright, for Bacheta, said she had "acted out of greed" after getting divorced from her husband of 20 years. continues here

BENEFIT CHEAT WHO HAD 8 HOMES MUST PAY BACK £600,000

A SCHEMING mother who fiddled £600,000 in benefits to fund an ­extravagant lifestyle has been ordered to repay every penny. 

Enid Bell, 67, and her daughter Lorraine bought eight houses and luxury cars with the fortune they swindled from the taxpayer.

Enid, who masterminded the scam, used at least eight different identities and addresses and set up separate bank accounts to make it difficult to trace the bogus claims.

Among the vehicles they bought was a high-powered Audi TT with a personalised registration plate that looked like LOZZIE B, owned by mother-of-two Lorraine, 30.

Jamaican-born Enid was jailed for four-and-a-half years last year and her daughter, who helped her by filling in forms, for two years and three months. Both had admitted conspiracy to defraud.

Preston Crown Court heard how they claimed £40,000 in income support, council tax and housing benefit between 2000 and 2007.

Enid, who had been jailed for nine months for benefit fraud in 1995, started her dishonest dealings again the day after she was released, the court was told.

She claimed £106,000 in income support, pension credit, disability living allowance, housing benefit and council tax benefit in the name of Edna Davis.

She claimed the same benefits in the names of Edna Joyce Coley for £109,000, Joyce Simms for £106,000, Elmay Joyce Rose Simms for £58,000, Cynthia Bell for £58,000, Maureen Simms for £56,000, Ester Rose Davis for £29,000 and Margaret Smith for £23,000.

“That you were able to steal from the taxpayer money for 12 years to a tune of well over half a million pounds is a matter of grave concern.

This was money intended to help vulnerable people in genuine need and distress.”

Now, after a proceeds-of-crime hearing at Burnley Crown Court, the couple, of Whalley Range, Manchester, have been ordered to repay all £612,475 they conned from the Department of Work and Pensions and local councils.

Enid, who sat in a wheelchair in court, was ordered to pay back £347,400 – £82,400 of it from frozen bank accounts and the other £265,000 from the sale of properties and assets.

Lorraine was told to refund £49,000 of her £265,075 instantly, with the remaining £216,000 to come from property and assets.

The investigation which uncovered the complex and tangled web of deceit was triggered when pregnant Lorraine told hospital staff her name was Maureen Simms and claimed she had been raped. But midwives were unable to trace her.

When Enid was questioned, she first claimed to be Lorraine’s aunt before admitting that she was her mother.

Angela Allen, chief investigator for the Department of Work and Pensions, said yesterday: “It was a hard slog trying to make sense of the fantastic scenario that was unravelling.

“I was stunned by the complexity of the whole situation. It is one of the most satisfying cases we have had to deal with, not to mention one of the strangest.”

She added: “Enid Bell sat in her wheelchair during sentencing looking like an innocent church-going granny. In fact she is a very intelligent, shrewd and calculating woman, who masterminded the whole operation.”

A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: “The case was made worthwhile when mother and daughter were given prison sentences. It is even better that they were hurt more by having the results of their criminal activity taken away.”

The court decision to force Enid and Lorraine Bell to hand back every penny of their ill-gotten gains was welcomed last night by the TaxPayers’ Alliance.

Mark Wallace, the organisation’s campaigns director, said: “It is good to see benefit fraud being treated in such a robust manner. All too often those who cheat the taxpayer just get a slap on the wrist and in the majority of cases there appears to be no attempt to recover what has been stolen.  continues here

Perhaps I’m blind but for the life of me I don’t see it, I’m looking for one simple word, “deportation”, no I don’t see it, it would seem that, “Jamaican-born Enid” is to stay, oh they may seize her assets, or more correctly ours but she remains, just another scheming parasite looking for chance. Its incredible, astounding, that whilst our airwaves convey doom and gloom, when jobs are lost and the future looks bleak that we continue to open the gate, how many more Enid’s, how many more, are we to be lived off forever, by politicians, avaricious elites and mass waves of migrants. When will we open our eyes, stand up for our own interests and tell them we have had enough, perhaps you don’t wish to appear impolite, inhospitable, perhaps you believe that it is our job to aid the world, believe it is our job to look after the “human rights” of all comers, perhaps we should continue destroying our children’s future and our own old age.

After all they tell us that, train us to think that way and few of us indeed voice concern, in many ways it’s understandable, we are cowed by fear, kept from advocating for ourselves by a false sense of morality. We stand back idle as a mass line of migrants take all we have, never wishing to appear the bigot, the racist, the wrong-doer, it is as if we are quite prepared to let this wave steal the very food from our children’s mouths rather than we be pilloried, did soviet Russia ever exercise such control. You see we are now self-policed, self-controlled, led by the nose yes but we shackle each other, they have taken the very concepts I speak of here on this site, “group behaviours” and moulded them into a prison, now innate behaviours are warped, corrupted, we now support once anti-group behaviours, believing that they are group advocated, which is anything but the truth, the group will always look to its own interests, it is the interests it believes it has that can be altered.

This has become known as “social engineering” or to put it bluntly conditioning or to the lay-man, brain-washing, I urge you to break out, to search for yourself the truth, they are destroying all we have created, all we could pass-on and all we could become, in the name of a sick ideology, a warped dream, our time is near, please I urge you, stand with us now before it is too late. You don’t have to do much, you don’t have to go over the top, as others have regretfully had to in the past, you don’t have to place yourself or your family at risk, all you have to do is support us, aid us in our last struggle or it is over. Years ago now, we nationalists spelled out the danger, we tried by all means at our disposal to take our message to the people but quite simply we were thwarted, oh yes by the state but most incredibly by the people, for they believed the lies, believed the fairy stories and lamentably the horror stories.

They never believed us, never gave us time, when we said that immigration was death, they laughed at our foolishness, dismissed us as fools conspiracy theorists or worse, when we said, that we would lose our towns and our cities to others we were dismissed as haters, when we said that alien conflicts would be played out upon British streets, they scoffed, now we stand at that very precipice I and others warned about, endeavoured to prevent, soon unless we put the brake on, it is over. There have been many times in our history when fate called upon us to act, when events called us to action, that time is now, we can still win through now, still live to see another far brighter day but leave it fifteen short years and it is over. 14

£42,000 benefit fraudster walks free - because savings 'were for daughter's dowry'

A benefit fraudster who claimed £42,000 by concealing his savings has walked free from court after saying the nest-egg was for his daughter's dowry.

Zohural Alam received a total of £42,298 in income support over seven years, claiming he had no savings.

But he was caught when investigators found £20,000 hidden in high-interest accounts and other investments, the Old Bailey was told.

Alam, 61, claimed the savings had been deposited by a relative in Bangladesh to pay the bridegroom's family when daughter Farjana married - though she has still to wed.

Judge Martin Stephens, QC, told the father-of-four that although such offences usually meant an immediate prison term, there were 'exceptional circumstances'.  

Passing a seven-month suspended sentence, the judge said: 'You knew you were doing wrong. You have faced up to it and pleaded guilty.

'But the fact is you were acting dishonestly... A short immediate prison sentence would be fully justified.'

However, the judge said there were 'exceptional circumstances', with no evidence to disprove Alam's claims about the dowry.

'I am sentencing today on the basis that the information you have given may be right, and I have no reason to suppose that the money wasn't being looked after by you for a form of dowry for your daughter,' Judge Stephens said.

Alam claimed income support 'on the basis that he was unfit and unable to work' from January 1999 until his scam was discovered in March 2006, prosecutor Ross Cifonelli told the Old Bailey.

Benefit regulations in 1999 ruled out income support if there were savings above £8,000.

But a week after first claiming income support, Alam apparently invested £6,000 in a Legal & General personal equity plan. By May 2000, a further £14,000 had also been invested in Legal & General ISAs.

The money in the equity plan and ISAs was recently transferred to the account of his daughter Farjana Alam.

Sheriyar Patel, defending, told the court: 'It originally came from his nephew in Bangladesh for the specific purpose of a dowry - kept for that purpose, but then wasn't used.

'It's in her name, but she hasn't been married.

'It's unfortunate - in some quarters clearly social customs such as dowries still exist.'  

The judge replied: 'It's not unfortunate. If that's the culture and that's the position, then so be it, but the fact is it doesn't allow someone to avoid disclosing money in their own name whilst claiming benefits.'  

Judge Stephens said he also considered Alam's health issues - including diabetes and heart problems - when passing sentence.  continues here

Jailed: Mother who held up daughter's severed fingers in court and claimed a 'voodoo curse' made her commit £1m benefit fraud

A £1million benefit fraud who claimed she acted under a voodoo curse – and produced her daughter's severed fingers in court as evidence – was jailed for five years yesterday.

A judge told Remi Fakorede, 46, that her testimony had been 'utterly unbelievable'.

Mother-of-six Fakorede had invented at least five phantom families, some with disabled children, to claim tax credits. 

During her three-week trial she claimed her bank accounts had been taken over by a 'voodoo man', whose curse had already killed her mother. 

Asked why she did not contact police, she told jurors that when her daughter was a baby, she suffered kidney failure and her fingers dropped off. 

She said the voodoo man told her she would suffer the same fate if she exposed the plot. 

It was at that point that she reached into her pocket and brought out a piece of tissue containing three little fingers. 

DNA tests confirmed that they belonged to her daughter, who is understood to have suffered from gangrene after her kidney failure. 

One juror was left in tears by the macabre stunt. 

Yesterday, Judge Jacqueline Beech told Fakorede: 'I find you to be a thoroughly dishonest woman. Your conduct in court was a barefaced attempt to manipulate the jury.' 

Snaresbrook Crown Court in East London had heard that £500,000 passed through Fakorede's bank accounts during the five-year scam, with a wider crime 'syndicate' linked to Nigeria pocketing £936,933. 

Fakorede, who holds British and Nigerian passports, was already receiving an annual income of up to £40,000 from property in Nigeria. 

She also ran a hairdressing salon and owned two East London properties worth hundreds of thousands. 

But she told housing benefit authorities she was penniless and out of work. 

She submitted 39 claims for tax credits, largely for children she had invented, and used a string of stolen National Insurance numbers. 

The court heard the handwriting on most of the the false claim forms could be linked to Fakorede, of Hackney, East London, and the cash was paid into an account in her maiden name. 

In the only case where she used her own name, she lied about her work and claimed for a child she did not have. 

She said she was a single mother, but investigators discovered her husband was still with her, although he has since left.

Judge Beech called the scam, which ran from August 2002 to June last year, 'a wholesale assault on the benefit system'. 

She condemned the ease with which Fakorede had been able to carry out the fraud and called for a review of the system which allows benefits to be paid into any bank account. 

Fakorede had denied committing fraud, but showed no reaction to the verdict until discussions began about confiscating her assets, when she sank her head into her hands. 

Her daughter, Denise Shofolawe- Coker, 21, was jailed for a year for laundering £70,000. continues here

Sometimes I think we must be mad, quite, quite mad, for permitting them to come, for permitting them to assail us so, there is no circumstance to my mind that, would allow permanent residence for non-Europeans, nor even for predatory migrants from European countries. A people have an absolute right to homogeneity, to there people specific culture and any government, institution or individual that works counter to this principle commits the highest treason. Remi Fakorede, robbed us, calculatedly helped herself, yet all of these new-comers rob us, some legally and some as in the case of Remi Fakorede illegally.

The difference is the level of robbery, as far as the government is concerned, one can, drag ones family through country after country, land here by whatever means and live off us and that is okay, protected by government and all the apparatus of the state, yet milk more and one is a criminal, I ask what is the difference. What is the difference to the old, dying in winter afraid to turn up the heat, what is the difference for the legions left languishing on the dole, what is the difference for the homeless, what is the difference for all of us and our ancestors before us, who built this Europe.

Can you not hear us or do you still refuse to listen, they do not belong here and we do not deserved to be treated in this way, what gives so many the right to rob us and yet it is a crime to cry out, a crime to state our grievance in, this the purported home of the free. The biggest thief of course is government, not only do they rob us but they invent legislation to jail us should we speak out, freedom is a lie, you must live to their laws or suffer a dire fate. So creatures such as Remi Fakorede, will always have free reign to rob our countries, to live off the toil of the workers, parasites amongst us, sucking us dry, protected by a treacherous government. 14