Landlady Jailed For Benefits Scam

A benefit cheat, who created a bogus landlord to claim £48,000 while renting out another property she owned, was jailed for a year today.

Clarissa Ihenacho, 55, claimed her matrimonial home was owned by the Family Education Helpline, but she had created the organisation and its HQ was a house she owned in a neighbouring borough.

"The defendant set out to defraud the state and when she was caught she told lie after lie after lie," said Croydon Crown Court Recorder Andrew Campbell-Tiech QC. "She forged documents to show she paid rent on a house she owned."

The court (pictured) heard the Nigerian mother-of-five also falsely claimed to have a phd from Paris's Sorbonne - insisting she should be addressed as 'Dr. Ihenacho' - and even appealed against the decision to suspend her claim when the fraud was exposed.

She was convicted of five counts of dishonestly making a false statements between June 27, 2005 and July 18, 2008 in relation to a housing and council tax benefit claim for Pemdevon Road, West Croydon.

She was also convicted of furnishing false documentation on or before June 27, 2005 and two counts of falsely representing between September 1, 2006 and September 6, 2009 she owned no property in relation to an income support claim.

Ihenacho resided at the Pemdevon Road address with her husband, whose name was on the property deeds, while renting out an address in Links Road, Tooting, which had been divided into two flats and occupied by more benefit claimants. 

"The defendant supplied a false tenancy agreement in her application for housing benefit and furnished false information to back up the lie," said prosecutor Miss Francesca Levett.

"The information named the Family Education Helpline as the landlord when, in fact, her husband was the owner of the property and she had a finical interest in it.

"She also failed to declare a number of bank accounts that would have shown she was receiving rent and income from other sources.

"She claimed to be a tenant even though she knew her husband owned the property.

"The defendant was the Family Education Helpline. She set it up and ran it and was the signatory of the organisation.

"It was run from the Links Road, a property owned by the defendant, and she rented it out even being paid housing benefit directly as the landlord.

"It is a contrived and systematic fraud on a commercial scale aimed at profiting at the taxpayers expense," added Miss Levett.

Ihenacho's children are all university-educated, her daughter is a Cambridge graduate and she received an 'Unsung Woman' award for charitable services to the Nigerian community.

"You made a series of deliberately false and dishonest claims and supported them with fraudulent documentation," Recorder Campbell-Tiech told tearful Ihenacho, who still protests her innocence.

"The proceeds were spent on two mortgages on properties you either owned or had a financial interest in."