Asylum seeker in £¼m benefits con
Four years’ jail after using cash for lavish lifestyle
AN asylum seeker claimed £244,000 in bogus benefits to fund her transformation into a social media fashion icon.
Tania Amisi, 27, defrauded 22 councils in a six-year crime spree using fake names and addresses.
The mother of three used the cash to rent a plush flat as she squandered the money on luxury holidays, designer clothes and a £25,000 handbag collection.
She showed off the spoils by posing for glamorous photoshoots, which she posted on Facebook, Instagram and other sites.
Admirers showered her with compliments on her good taste and enviable lifestyle.
Yesterday, Amisi was jailed for four years after being extradited from Paris, where she fled after pleading guilty to fraud in 2015.
She will give birth to a fourth child behind bars after a judge was told she was ‘addicted’ to crime and its proceeds.
The single mother came to the UK from the Congo as an asylum seeker when she was 12, London’s Southwark Crown Court heard.
Her family claimed her father had been assassinated and she was granted indefinite leave to remain and settled in the city.
But she spent six years tricking councils into paying her housing and other benefits, submitting 37 claims. She used the names Tania Abidi, Becca Amisi and Tania Alicia with seven different credit cards linked to the four aliases and two Congolese passports.
Investigators put her under surveillance after she tried to cash several counterfeit cheques.
When they raided her Chelsea Harbour home they found her huge fashion collection. She had binged on goods at Prada, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Hermes and Yves Saint Laurent.
At the bottom of her wardrobe were Givenchy and Dolce & Gabbana handbags. Amisi blew some of the cash on holidays to the Congo, Ivory Coast, America, Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey.
Officials found she had put in applications for a further £65,000 in benefits which were never paid. In interviews she claimed she was supporting her lifestyle by working in a betting shop.
But after pleading guilty to some of her crimes she cut off her electronic tag, booked herself on to the Eurostar and went on the run in France and Belgium.
Four months later she was arrested in the French capital after being convicted of a further 17 fraud offences in her absence.
Jailing her, Judge Michael Grieve said: ‘The nature of this offending was fraudulent from the outset and committed to fund your lavish and extremely comfortable lifestyle.
‘This was not a case of a person in dire financial straits submitting to temptation and making fraudulent claims to get by.
‘You committed these offences to fund holidays, restaurants and designer handbags and clothes. There’s very little evidence you have shown any remorse before you went to ground in Paris.’