Nursing student who forged visa jailed over £23k funding fraud
A ZIMBABWEAN student used a forged visa to fraudulently claim £23,000 of public money for a Scots university course.
Thandiwe Matikiti was given the funding to do a three-year nursing course at Stirling University after officials accepted the fake documentation.
She pretended to the Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) that the Home
Office had given her indefinite leave to remain in the UK.
But the truth was that her personal details had been forged into a genuine leave to remain visa issued in 2003 to another person and that she had been living and working in Scotland illegally for years.
Her scam was discovered after she was reported to the Fraud Prevention Agency by a former associate in Birmingham who was the subject of a separate investigation. SAAS investigators interviewed her and called in the police. She was charged with fraud and failed to complete her course after being remanded in custody at her first court appearance in June this year.
Sheriff Douglas Kinloch last week said Matikiti, who pleaded guilty, was clearly an intelligent person. Jailing her for 14 months, he highlighted that her fraud had been carefully planned and had continued for three years.
He said: ‘You obtained £23,000 of public money to which you were not entitled.
‘Though you show remorse for what you did... there is in my view only one way in which a deliberate fraud at this level and in these circumstances can be dealt with, and that’s by way of a prison sentence.’
Livingston Sheriff Court heard that Matikiti, who