A Ghanaian who succeeded in defrauding the taxpayer to the tune of £191,000 has been jailed for seven years by a Croydon Crown Court in the UK.
The 52-year-old woman, known as Angel Jackson, lavished £1m on a wide range of assets without ever working a single day.
Prosecutors say Jackson falsified documents and claimed she had been confined to a wheel chair after an accident to demand housing benefit, income support and compensation between 2002 and 2012.
But, luck eluded her when British authorities spotted her on a CCTV using the treadmill at her plush private gym.
Jackson, whose identity has long been in doubt, claimed benefits for properties she didn’t live in, in the names of people who didn’t exist, and for accidents that didn’t happen.
The dailymail.com reports that Judge Adam Hiddleston handing down her sentence described her as a ‘vain and self-important person’ with a ‘staggering contempt for the court’.
He added: “You are a thoroughly dishonest person. You are a professional fraudster. It is your life’s work.
“You have taken and taken and taken and it would appear, you have never given anything back”.
Prosecutor Francesca Levett told the court Angle Jackson also spent a whopping £300,000 on two flats in the same block and unfairly claimed housing benefits for each of them.
She also tried to wring every penny in compensation from two car accidents using invented passengers, only to be caught when doctors spotted two separate x-rays on two separate claims were almost identical.
“Far from being an honest claimant, who turned to the authorities because she was genuinely in need, she manipulated the system, told countless lies, hijacked identities and defrauded her way into becoming an affluent property owner without ever working a single day,” the prosecutor told the court.
The report indicated that Jackson persuaded her Irish born fiancé Thomas Duffy, by telling him she was a ‘lady of traditional values’ and acquired a house with him in August 2002 – while still claiming housing benefit – and going behind his back to obtain his UK residency to support her own.
The pair had married on Valentines Day 2002, but she stopped him from telling his family and yet she didn’t even allow him to live with her.
Ms Levett said: ‘This was very far from a happy, new marriage, as not only did Mr Duffy not live with his wife, but the marriage wasn’t ever consummated.’
The court heard that ‘whenever he needed to sign something presented to him by his wife, his glasses would disappear’.
The prosecutor believes Jackson used her husband to purchase a property she had no intention of sharing with him.
In July 2005, Jackson bought another property, a £150,000 flat in south London, in her husband’s name, without him knowing – and two months later bought another flat in the same building, this time in her own name, for £152,500.
Jackson also lied to her husband that home they owned together was being repossessed and that he had to move out – all to support a claim she had made on a housing benefit form.
Jackson was jailed after being found guilty of 32 charges relating to her ten-year fraud campaign on Tuesday.
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