Benefits fraud gang got pounds 1m in false claims: Conspirators came from privileged families
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Your support makes all the difference.A NATION-WIDE social security fraud netted about pounds 1m for its organisers, a trial in London was told yesterday.
The highly sophisticated operation, which involved a large gang of wealthy Nigerians, used large numbers of bogus and stolen documents and employed 2,000 false identities. It was the largest benefits conspiracy of its kind.
Those involved, largely young men and women educated in British public schools - and whose fathers included some of the west African country's top judges, military officials and businessmen - mainly used their gains to finance import and export businesses.
There has been a series of trials and some of those convicted have already been jailed for up to three and a half years and recommended for deportation. Others are due to be sentenced on Friday of next week.
Those involved in the Income Support and housing benefit frauds shipped valuable loads of expensive designer-label clothing to Nigeria for resale and traded in expensive watches. One woman made a total of pounds 90,000.
The loss is calculated at pounds 1m, but would almost certainly have been millions more if government officials had not been tipped off in November 1992 by a worker at the Department of Social Security's office in Fulham, south-west London, who spotted numerous claims in different names but with largely similar stories and often similar handwriting.
An intensive probe was launched, involving at its height 22 social security fraud investigators. Over several months, surveillance operations were launched and 300 addresses were identified as being used.
Most of them were in London but others were in Oxfordshire, Manchester, Northampton and Milton Keynes.
In a move designed not to alert those involved but to limit their losses, social security officials deliberately allowed some of the bogus claims to go through, but blocked or delayed others.
In August last year, police staged a series of raids. Eleven people were arrested in London, followed by others in Manchester and elsewhere. Dozens of benefit books and other documents were seized.
A total of 21 people were detained. Thirteen were eventually brought to court, with all but two either pleading guilty or being convicted of defrauding the DSS during three trials at Inner London Crown Court, Southwark.
Jurors heard that investigators identified a total of 2,700 false claims made during the 20-month swindle.
A spokesman for the DSS benefits agency said: 'We are very happy with the result of the investigation and the outcome of the trials.'
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