Grenfell Tower: Man jailed for stealing £50,000-worth of emergency relief
'Few indeed would contemplate stooping as low as you have,' says judge
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A cleaner who stole £53,000-worth of emergency relief intended for the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire has been jailed.
Antonio Gouveia, 33, stayed in a £155-per-night central London hotel for 289 days and took cash handouts and food allowances by claiming to be a former resident of the tower.
Gouveia claimed he was living in a flat with a woman in her eighties on the night of the fire, which killed 72 people.
To find out the name of his supposed landlady, Gouveia went to a post depot and asked whether any letters had come for flat 42 of the tower.
He discovered Hermine Harris lived at the address as the postal worker leafed through the envelopes.
He wracked up a £44,795 hotel bill at the Cumberland Hotel, Marylebone, paid for with funding for Grenfell survivors. He also accepted cash and a free laptop.
Gouveia admitted two counts of fraud by false representation between June 20 and April 5 at his first appearance at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
The Portuguese national was the 11th person to be charged with fraud following the blaze.
Jailing him for three years and two months on Thursday, Judge Giles Curtis-Raleigh said: “Most people reacted with horror and dismay, and feelings of deep sympathy and profound concern for the survivors, and those others most directly affected.
“Many did what they could to help in a spontaneous outpouring of generosity and compassion.
“Your response was different – you decided to use the situation to your personal advantage, to enrich yourself dishonestly by plundering the public funds put aside to assist genuine victims of that disaster in their hour of need.”
The Portuguese national was the 11th person to be charged with fraud following the blaze.
Mary Van Woodenberg, for Gouveia, said the father of two had been sleeping rough for eight months before the disaster.
He had been so terrified falling behind on child support and losing visiting rights to his children he had sacrificed the roof over his head in order to provide for them, she said.
“He’s not a hardened criminal or a man who did this for financial gain, but a desperate man who did this out of necessity,” she said.
Judge Curtis-Raleigh said: “You were homeless. Sadly, homelessness is a fact of life for many, but few indeed would contemplate stooping as low as you have by acting in this way.”
Ms Harris – the woman whom Gouveia claimed to live with – described his actions as “pouring salt on the wounds" of the disaster.
Edward Daffarn, a representative of survivors through the Grenfell Action Group, said: “Every time the word fraud and Grenfell are seen together, the collective feelings of the general public turn in a negative fashion towards our community.
“The actions of a few criminals paint our community in a negative light and deflect away from the real issues that we need to deal with.”
Press Association contributed to this report