Saturday, February 25, 2012

Gypsies

Gypsies who pocketed £800,000 in benefits ordered to pay back £17.65

Two members of a Roma gypsy family who flew in and out of Britain to pocket more than £800,000 in benefits have been ordered to pay back just £17.65.



Ramona and Dorina Dumitru were part of a gang that cheated taxpayers out of hundreds of thousands of pounds in what was described by a judge as a 'flagrant' attack on the benefits system.

The fraudsters used forged home office documents and job references to illegally obtain national insurance numbers, which they used to claim a range of state handouts.

Gang members claimed benefits under two different aliases at the same time, and boosted the payouts they received by inventing children, producing what they said were photographs of the non-existent youngsters.

Some of the claimants did not live in the UK at all while making benefits claims, with one woman making regular flights into the country from Romania to collect their payments.

Today (FRI) at Southwark Crown Court Ramona Dumitru, 34, who claimed she had six children, aged between two and 13 years old, was ordered to pay back just £16.65p of the £81,106.33p she netted.

Dorina Dumitru, 39, who used both her name and an alias was told she would only have to repay £1 despite having pocketed £101,333.27 after the court heard she had no realisable assets.

The two women were jailed in May 2011 alongside seven other gang members for a total of more than 13 years.

Ringleader Telus Dumitru, 37, received a sentence of four years and eight months, while his wife Ramona, was sentenced to two years in prison.

Her sister Claudia Radu, 36, who was arrested at Stansted airport after flying in to the UK to pick-up her latest set of handouts, was jailed for six months.

Their father Ion Stoica, 57, was also jailed for six months while Claudia's brother-in-law Adrian Radu, 34, who had made repeated benefits claims while living in Romania, was jailed for 12 months.

Dorina Dumitru, was jailed for one year and eight months, Marian Gheorghe, 35, for two years and four months, and Ion Lincan, 35, for four weeks.

Crooked construction boss Abdel Lemsatef, 67, was jailed for nine months after he admitted supplying Dumitru with the forged job references the gang needed to get their hands on national insurance numbers.

Judge Michael Gledhill made the confiscation orders against the pair without comment.

When he had jailed the family, Judge Gregory Stone said: 'This fraud was a large scale fraud which deliberately targeted the UK benefit system.'

The judge said most of the defendants were related, and that they were connected to the town of Tandarei in Romania, adding that large sums of money had been traced through bank accounts in that country.

Telus Dumitru, of (18) Alma Street, Nottingham, admitted conspiracy to defraud, while Ramona Dumitru, of the same address; Lincan, of (34) Finnemore Road, Birmingham; Dorina Dumitru, of (23) Myrtle Ave, Nottingham; Gheorghe, of (60) Willow Crescent, Birmingham and Claudia and Adrian Radu and Ion Stoica, who all gave addresses in Romania, admitted various individual counts of theft, fraud and money laundering.

Lemsatef, of (78) Kensington, Liverpool, admitted two counts of supplying articles for use in fraud

The charges dated from between March 2003 and December 2009.

A further confiscation hearing for Telus Dumitru, Marian Gheorghe, Claudia Radu and Ion Sotica will begin on April 26, and is expected to last for two days.


more @ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9104128/Gypsies-who-pocketed-800000-in-benefits-ordered-to-pay-back-17.65.html

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