Albanian woman in life-saving £72,000 NHS op fraud jailed
AN ALBANIAN woman who entered the UK illegally has been jailed after using a false identity to get a life-saving kidney transplant which cost the NHS £72,000.
Fatmira Tafa, 31, came to the UK in 2014 after travelling in the back of a lorry through several countries to be with a man she had met on the internet.
The man, known as Nadricim Bengasi, gave Tafa a Greek ID in the name of Eleni Manola, whose identity she took to gain the benefits of an EU citizen living in the UK.
While living in Cardiff Tafa became seriously ill and a serious kidney condition was diagnosed after being picked up at an opticians appointment, which meant that she needed life-saving surgery.
Tafa, through the use of her false identity, received a kidney transplant on the NHS at the University Hospital of Wales (UHW), in Cardiff, in October 2016 – treatment she was not legally entitled to as an Albanian national without leave to live in the UK.
A sentencing hearing at Cardiff Crown Court heard Tafa was a “naive and young” woman who had been “hoodwinked” into coming to the UK for romance, but was in reality a “vulnerable” woman who had been exploited by Mr Bengasi who was himself an illegal immigrant.
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 Mr Bengasi on the internet and formed some longdistance relationship and she decided to leave Albania to meet up with 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.”
Mr Donoghue said that Tafa’s identity fraud came to light at a follow-up appointment she attended at UHW in March 2017 following her surgery when she broke down in front of a nurse who was treating her.
He added: “When in hospital she suddenly began to break down and said, ‘Sorry’. When the nurse inquired it became apparent she was using a false ID.
“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 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 where she admitted the offence of using a false ID card and it was established through the Greek Embassy that Eleni Monola is a real person.
Mr Donoghue said the total cost of Tafa’s kidney transplant to the NHS was £72,469. He said that as an Albanian national Tafa was not legally entitled to a transplant on the NHS and, if her true identity had been known, she would have been placed on dialysis, stabilised, and returned to Albania for treatment.
Following her disclosure Tafa made a formal application for asylum in the UK to the Home Office, which remains pending.
Andrew Davies, defending, said his client was entitled to full credit for her guilty pleas at the first available opportunity. He said: “There’s no determination she was trafficked but it was said by the Home Office they accepted her account and that has been investigated.
”The prosecution said her surgery was life-saving. Albania does not have a free health service. She was facing her own death and if she had not made the decision to have surgery, who knows where she’d be now.”
Judge Jeremy Jenkins told Tafa, who wept in the dock, that while the court had “great sympathy” for her plight, he had no option but to pass an immediate custodial sentence.
He said: “I pass this sentence with a heavy heart and it gives me no pleasure to do so, but it is the appropriate sentence for your offending.”
Tafa, of Mary Ann Street, Cardiff, was jailed for 14 months after admitting fraud and possession of an identity card with improper intentions.
A spokesman for Cardiff and Vale University Health Board said: “Fraud against the NHS in Wales will not be tolerated. Any fraud against the NHS deprives the service of valuable funds and persons will be prosecuted whenever appropriate.”