Albanian woman used fake Greek ID to get £72k kidney on NHS

AN ALBANIAN woman has been jailed for 14 months for using a fake ID to get a kidney transplant that cost the NHS more than £72,000.

Illegal immigrant Fatmira Tafa, 31, travelled across Europe to Britain in the back of a lorry to be with a man she had met online.

She was given a fake Greek identity in the name of Eleni Manola and started to receive benefits as an EU citizen living in the UK. Two years after Tafa settled in Cardiff, she was diagnosed with a serious kidney condition.

A court heard she had the transplant, which cost £72,469, at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, in October 2016.

She was not legally entitled to the treatment as an Albanian national without leave to live in Britain. Prosecutor Steven Donoghue said: ‘It seems from what Ms Tafa told the authorities the reason she made the journey to the UK was she encountered Nadricim Bengasi on the internet. She formed some long distance relationship and decided to leave Albania to meet him and be in the UK.

‘Once she was in the UK she began to use a false ID card in the name of a Greek national called Eleni Manola and she used the card for registering for medical services at Clifton Surgery.’

Her fraud came to light in a follow-up appointment in March 2017 when she broke down in front of a nurse. Mr Donoghue said: ‘Another doctor came over and spoke to her and she went on to say her boyfriend made her do it but he had since been deported.

‘ She said when she

‘Facing her own death’

arrived she thought she was coming for romance reasons and she believed the boyfriend would have legal documents for her.’

Tafa was interviewed by the Home Office and admitted using a false ID card. It was established through the Greek Embassy that Eleni Manola is a real person. Tafa has since applied for asylum in the UK, which remains pending.

Andrew Davies, defending, said: ‘Albania does not have a free health service. She was facing her own death.’

Judge Jeremy Jenkins said he jailed her ‘with a heavy heart’ but it was an ‘appropriate sentence’.