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Fraudster Tunde Williams scammed over £1m along with his wife Oriyomi |
COUPLE’S £1m ‘DAY OF JACKAL’ CON
Names of dead children ‘stolen’ to create false identities
A COUPLE who masterminded a £1 million Day of the Jackal-style benefit fraud using the names of dead children face jail today (Friday).
In one of the UK’s biggest scams of its kind, Tunde and Oriyomi Williams assumed the identities of at least 23 children who died between 1969 and 1975.
Today, an Islington Council investigator who helped crack the 14-year fraud speaks exclusively about the inquiry and a trail of clues that led from Archway to Nigeria.
Oriyomi, 40, and her husband Tunde, 49, began the operation in 1992 using the names of deceased children, most of whom had died before the age of five in about 1970. One child lived for only 10 minutes.
The same method is used by the assassin to assume a new identity in the 1971 Frederick Forsyth novel the Day of the Jackal.
The 55-year-old Islington investigator, who asked not to be named for fear of prejudicing future cases, said: “It was exactly like Day of the Jackal. We relate to the book in training for the way people obtain false identities and how easy it is for them to do it.
“These people are safe in the knowledge that the real person never had the chance to have made the applications.”
The Williamses fiddled £838,000 in government tax credits, £151,000 in housing benefits from Islington Council, £118,000 in income support and job seekers’ allowance, £38,500 from Tower Hamlets Council and £29,000 from Hammersmith and Fulham.
Most of the families whose dead children’s identities were used by the Williamses have not been told about the case for fear it would distress them.
The Williamses may have bought wholesale “bundles” of identities.
The Islington investigator, a benefit fraud policy and training officer, said: “It can be done in a number of ways, for instance going through the lists of deceased children at the Family Records Centre. It can be as simple as that, but they could have bought the identities.”
“It would be conjecture to say exactly how they got the names, but the established method is through death records. The information is publicly available.
“It is likely to have come from public records at some point and the Family Records Centre is where it all is.”
After getting the children’s names, the couple used the information to obtain vital identity documents, such as birth certificates.
The investigation was headed by the Department for Works and Pensions (DWP) with HM Revenue and Customs and London borough investigators.
It began in early 2006, although suspicions were first aroused in 2002, when tax inspectors noticed a number of addresses and identities matched up.
The Islington investigator said: “They spotted patterns of claims for single parents with large numbers of children in specific areas.”
It was then discovered the Williamses had rented then purchased properties under the council’s right-to-buy scheme – again using false identities – in Wheeler Gardens, King’s Cross, and Highcroft Road, Archway. Rent charges were later claimed back for the fake tenants who ‘lived’ there.
Earlier claims were also made from rented flats on the Six Acres estate in Finsbury Park and Warltersville Mansions in Archway.
The Islington investigator said: “A relatively small number of addresses in Islington were being used to run multiple claims – and they were all one-bedroom properties.”
When Highcroft Road was raided, numerous documents and computer records connecting the couple to the fake identities were seized.
Officially, Tunde and Oriyomi Williams ran Essencee, an import-export business dealing in wigs and hairpieces and based in their home country Nigeria.
They lived in Africa for much of the time, where their children attended school, but came back to Islington to “refresh” their claims.
The biggest single Islington fraud was housing benefit for one property, amounting to £61,106 between 2000 and 2006.
Oriyomi Williams was the first to be charged and appeared at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court in July last year.
The Islington investigator said: “I went to the court and sat with the DWP investigator. He said: ‘Bloody hell, he’s here’, and saw Tunde in the public gallery looking exactly the same as his passport photo. A police officer walked into the gallery and arrested him right there.”
As well as using false identities, the couple also claimed in their own names. Oriyomi Williams was found to have four National Insurance numbers, based upon variations of her name.
In June at Wood Green Crown Court, she pleaded guilty to 33 charges of false accounting. Her husband admitted six charges of false accounting and two charges of acquiring criminal property and of assisting in the acquisition of criminal property.
Both had pleaded not guilty to 51 charges under the Theft Act and Proceeds of Crime Act at an earlier hearing in January.
The couple have now been on remand for 13 months and were due to be sentenced on Wednesday at Wood Green but the case is now listed for today (Friday).
Judge Shaun Lyons told the couple they faced “inevitable” prison sentences.
None of the money has been recovered and much of it is feared to be tied up in hard-to-reach Nigerian bank accounts.
Councillor Terry Stacy, Lib Dem deputy council leader, said: “This is a shocking and callous crime, and we have done well to expose it. The judge has indicated that a custodial sentence is inevitable.
“Their actions are criminal and a drain on society, and heavy punishments are more than justified.” |
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