Jailed, the death- faker who swindled benefits to give wife a boob- job
A FRAUDSTER who faked his death and paid for his wife’s breast enlargements with a £ 43,000 benefits fiddle was jailed yesterday.
Crooked psychologist Stephen Kellaway was given a 32- month sentence after a judge condemned his “cynical and selfish” scam.
Kellaway, 54, and his Russian wife Nelli, 43, fraudulently claimed housing benefit on five properties in London worth £ 1million, Croydon Crown Court heard.
But when council investigators began an inquiry, Kellaway fled Britain using a fake Irish passport in the name of a dead child.
The court heard he arrived in Moscow as a fugitive. There he bribed a mortuary official with a bottle of vodka to match his passport details with a dead tramp in a bid to fake his own death.
His wife also went to Moscow, where she underwent cosmetic breast surgery.
She was arrested returning to England with the tramp’s ashes in an urn, pretending they were her husband’s.
Kellaway went on the run for two years before, penniless, he was extradited from Thailand to Britain.
Yesterday, wearing a light grey jogging top and bottoms and heavyrimmed spectacles, he was jailed after admitting three counts of benefit fraud and one of identity fraud at an earlier hearing.
His wife was convicted of three counts of fraud and two of money laundering in 2010 and given a twoyear suspended sentence. She claimed Kellaway had forced her to commit the crimes.
Jailing Kellaway, Judge Shani Barnes said: “What a sorry mess this all is. Your wife made it very clear in her mitigation that you were the instigator of these offences.
“Between both of you, you had five properties and rented them out. A cynical and between you.
“It seems to me that you have struck at the very heart of the benefits system. There are thousands of desperate people who rely on benefits. People such as you cynically steal from them and those of us who pay our taxes.”
Of the deception she said: “You planned it in a way that was persistent and intelligent.”
Mark Himsworth, prosecuting, said the Kellaways, who have three children, made fraudulent claims to Hammersmith & Fulham and Richmond councils.
They claimed thousands of pounds in housing benefit despite owning and renting out five properties worth £ 1million.
Mr Himsworth said Kellaway left in 2008 on a fake passport and came up with the plan to fake his death. He persuaded his wife to take the urn back to England.
But she was arrested and alleged that “she had been put up to it”.
He added she had three life insurance documents which valued her husband’s death at £ 1.7million. But no claims were submitted.
Jennifer Oborne, defending, said Kellaway did not force his wife into the swindle and had said “it seemed like a good idea at the time”.
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