Britain’s biggest ever benefit fraudsters revealed as Bulgarian gang who swiped £50m to spend on luxury bling
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BRITAIN’S biggest benefit fraudsters cheated taxpayers out of £54million and spent it on luxury cars, designer clothes and flashy watches.
A gang of five criminals, originally from Bulgaria, made more than 6,000 false claims.
Over four-and-a-half years, the group operated on an industrial scale out of the back of three corner shops in Wood Green, North London, with a library of fake identities used to make fraudulent claims.
Bogus documents included tenancy agreements and forged letters from GPs, landlords and employees.
Some of the claims were made using the names of real people who would pay the gang to use their identities to make the claims on their behalf.
The fraudsters, Gyunesh Ali, Galina Nikolova, Patritsia Paneva, Stoyan Stoyanov and Tsvetka Todorova, lived a life of luxury on Universal Credit.
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It was paid into hundreds of different bank accounts.
Work is ongoing to recover the vast sums of money, with some thought to have been spent on property in Bulgaria.
The UK’s biggest ever investigation into benefit fraud was launched when a pattern emerged in the claims, with names and addresses repeated.
The gang’s assets were frozen after their arrests, with cops seizing cars, more than £750,000 cash, designer clothes, jewellery and watches.
Ali, 33, Nikolova, 38, Paneva, 26, Stoyanov, 27, and Todorova, 52, pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering-related offences at Wood Green crown court.
They face record prison time when they are sentenced in May.
Ben Reid, specialist prosecutor at the Serious Economic, Organised Crime and International Directorate at the Crown Prosecution Service called the case a “very serious attack” on the UK’s benefit system.
