Benefit officers ‘used fake ID scam to cheat taxpayers out of £1m’
HOUSING benefits assessors used fake claimants to con the taxpayer out of £1million during a ten-year scam, a court has heard.
The group of seven officials, who worked at a number of local authorities around London, are accused of running a ‘fraudulent business on a grand scale’.
Southwark Crown Court heard that to make the claims seem legitimate, a couple who had been coached on which identities to use would turn up at housing offices for fake interviews with the gang members to have their benefits processed.
The benefits would then be paid into a string of bank accounts that had been opened using false passports, before the couple handed the cash back to the seven officials, who collected between £51,155 and £289,469 over the years.
Menelik Cowan, 37, and six other council workers targeted Lambeth, Kingston, and Barking and Dagenham councils in London between 2006 and 2016. Opening the trial, prosecutor Gareth Munday told jurors: ‘When I say it is a business, that is exactly what this was. This was an organised crime conducted in a business-like fashion.’
Two more alleged members of the gang – Bashiru Tahiru and Elaine Agyemang – who, it is claimed, used fake identities to fill in paperwork and attend the show interviews, were due to be on trial but have ‘run away’ to avoid prosecution, the court heard.
The prosecutor said that at one point, Cowan had sent a text message to Tahiru with details of the identity he had to use, including address and salary information, saying: ‘Make them work for 16 hours per week, earning between £60 and £70 per week.’ Another message read: ‘Make them text me when they get to the office and get them to go to reception.’
Cowan would then tell the fake claimants to stay seated until he called them forward for their interviews so he could complete the false paperwork, the court heard.
Mr Munday added: ‘There is no dispute that the claims in this case – the claims that were processed by the seven housing assessors – were false and fraudulent.’
Cowan, from Enfield, north London, denies three counts of fraud and laundering £150,759 of the £289,469 he is accused of taking while working for Lambeth Council in south London. He has admitted one count of possession of identification documents with improper intention.
Natasha Francis, 38, Hugh Small, 39, Cassandra Johnson. 37, Jessica Bartley, 35, Rahel Asfaha, 36, and Alexander Williams, 39, all from south London, are facing a range of charges that include fraud, possession of fake identity documents, fraud by abuse of position and money laundering.
The trial continues.