BENEFITS CHEAT STEALS £244,000 FROM 22 COUNCILS AFTER BRITAIN GAVE HER ASYLUM
A SHAMELESS former asylum seeker was behind bars last night after cheating taxpayers out of a staggering £244,000 to fund a luxury lifestyle.
Fraudster Tania Amisi – dubbed The Queen of the Scroungers – was finally brought to justice and jailed for four years after making a mockery of Britain’s benefits system.
During a six-year scam, Amisi, 27, pocketed a fortune by creating a series of fake identities to submit bogus housing benefit claims to 22 councils.
She raked in tens of thousands more by sub-letting homes to unsuspecting tenants. Amisi, born in the Congo, lived a life of glamour, splashing out on designer handbags and clothes, having shopping sprees in Harrods and going globe-trotting.
The pregnant mother-of-three was only caught after she tried to cash fake cheques and police discovered bank statements which showed huge amounts of money flowing into her accounts. After the scam unravelled, Amisi appeared in court and admitted fraud but was released on bail.
Days before she was due to be sentenced she fled the country and headed to Europe after cutting off her electronic tag.
Amisi was convicted in her absence but continued to live the high-life during two years on the run before she was caught in Paris in July.
London’s Southwark Crown Court heard that Amisi span a web of lies to dupe local authorities into paying her benefits for homes she did not live in.
Amisi made thousands every month after submitting 37 claims to 22 councils – 21 of which were in London. She also put in applications for a further £65,000 which was not paid to her.
She came to Britain as an asylum seeker aged 12 and was granted indefinite leave to remain. She claimed to be a single mother working in a betting shop to eke out a living on minimum wage.
Amisi was exposed in the BBC programme Britain On The Fiddle which looked at her luxury lifestyle and revealed she had two homes in Chelsea Harbour – one of London’s most exclusive addresses. One investigator said: “We tend to do multiple ID frauds but hers is off the scale.”
Jailing Amisi on Monday, Judge Michael Grieve QC told her: “This was not a case of a person in dire financial straits submitting to temptation and making fraudulent claims to get by.
Consequences
“You committed these offences to fund your very affluent lifestyle on holidays, restaurants and designer handbags and clothes. You had a flat in Chelsea paid for by your fraudulent activities and your son had all the material benefits he could want.
“Once discovered you could not face up to the consequences and you fled to mainland Europe until you were brought back.”
He added: “The methods used to commit these frauds involved careful planning and an ever increasing degree of complexity, involving false names and forged bank documents. The nature of this offending was fraudulent from the outset and committed to fund your lavish and extremely comfortable lifestyle.
“There’s very little evidence you have shown any remorse before you went to ground in Paris.”
Yesterday critics hit out at Britain’s soft-touch handout culture. John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “We need to cut benefit fraud down to zero and that means coming down hard on the minority who attempt to cheat.”
Ukip MEP Gerard Batten branded the case “scandalous”. He said: “I’d give 10 out of 10 for criminal ingenuity and nought out of 10 for a benefits system that doesn’t have any adequate safeguards against fraud.”
Amisi, due to give birth in prison, was extradited to Britain in September. The Department for Work and Pensions will seek a court order to reclaim the money stolen.
IF BENEFITS cheat Tania Amisi had put her skills to better use she could be running a multi-national corporation. Instead this pregnant mother-of-three, who came to Britain from the Congo as an asylum seeker, has spent years running rings round the authorities with a series of complex frauds which have paid for luxury flats, five-star hotels, holidays and designer handbags and dresses.
She has used any number of aliases to acquire dodgy credit cards and two passports. And all the time she has been supported by the taxpayer.
She has now been sent to jail for four years for 21 offences and the Department for Work and Pensions is seeking a court order to reclaim the money she stole. Though considering how long it took to get Ms Amisi to court the chances of the DWP speedily recouping its losses seem slim.
Was it this woman’s sheer tenacity and brass neck that allowed her to pursue her criminal career so successfully or is it a fault in the benefits system itself which allowed such flagrant behaviour to go unchecked for so long?
“This was not a case of a person in dire financial straits submitting to temptation and making fraudulent claims to get by,” said Judge Michael Grieve. Indeed not. Tania Amisi has been the recipient of this country’s benevolence towards asylum seekers and has taken outrageous advantage. But soft-touch Britain must take some of the blame.