Woman posing as survivor and widow of Grenfell fire guilty of £19,000 fraud
A WOMAN posing as a widow from Grenfell Tower pretended her “dead” husband had been miraculously found in a cave as part of a £19,000 fraud.
Joyce Msokeri, 47, told authorities she had escaped the devastating west London fire in June last year and thought her husband had died – but she was actually single and living miles away at the time.
For weeks she stayed in a Hilton hotel and filled the room to bursting with donations and gifts from well-wishers. While there she concocted an elaborate ploy to claim insurance for the death of her fictitious partner.
But when her scam began to unravel, she pressed on with her fraudulent activities, exploiting a vulnerable man by persuading him to pretend to be her husband so she could tell investigators she had miraculously found him living in a cave in Margate, Kent.
Despite being twice arrested on suspicion of fraud, she continued with the pretence and managed to get him admitted to a mental health ward to support her claim.
Msokeri was finally charged and was later found guilty at her trial at Southwark Crown Court on three counts of fraud against the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the Hilton and charities. She was also convicted of possessing a false document. Judge Michael Grieve QC said he would pass sentence on April 6.
Two relatives of one of the victims that Msokeri tried to claim was her husband sat in the public gallery as the verdicts were read out.
David Jeremy QC, prosecuting, said the fraud totalled £19,000 and that the debt would be repaid from money and items seized from Msokeri.
The defendant, of Ambleside Gardens, Sutton, south London, had repeatedly tried to frustrate justice by faking illnesses and even sat in a wheelchair that she did not need.
She was eventually admitted to hospital for tests toward the end of the case but the trial continued in her absence. She made claims after presenting herself at a volunteer centre the day after the fire broke out on June 14. In reality she had spent the night of the fire at her flat in Sutton, and the following morning spent an hour on the phone to Sky complaining about being charged £1.50 for an unpaid bill. Her story began to unfold when she was unable to tell the authorities the number of the flat in the tower where she had supposedly lived, despite claiming to have lived there for five months.
She told police her missing husband had appeared in footage recovered from the blaze showing the final moments of two men and two women, even though both men had already been identified. Msokeri was first shown the footage by a volunteer, but later feigned shock and rolled over on the floor wailing when she was shown it by the police.
In his closing speech, Mr Jeremy said: “What the evidence demonstrates is that she committed these crimes through greed and she got away with it for a certain amount of time through her skill at manipulation.”
Msokeri had created three different personas for her non-existent husband in a bid to claim compensation, eventually persuading a man with a history of mental health problems to pose as her spouse.
Mr Jeremy said: “You would have thought that by July she would have called it a day and stopped, but she wanted to double her money with her claim about her husband. She wanted a bigger flat than would have been given to a single person.”
The court heard Msokeri had filled 10 suitcases with new items from a store set up specially to help survivors and had applied for a number of mobile phones and laptops.