A Ugandan identity and benefits fraudster - currently trying to convince the Home Office she will be persecuted for being a lesbian if deported - was jailed for sixteen months yesterday for her role in an eighteen year £4m plot.
Betty Tibakawa, 24, studied here for three years under a false identity after entering the country five-and-a-half years ago on a six month visa and her lengthy asylum battle has become a cause celebre despite the authorities firm belief she has invented her account of homophobic abuse in her homeland.
Tibakawa, of Cordell House, Newton Road, Finsbury Park pleaded guilty to conspiring with others, including ringleader Ruth Nabaguzi, 49, to defraud immigration and DSS departments and other government departments between June 12, 1993 and September 9, 2011.
She also pleaded guilty to making an application for UK naturalisation in a false name and using that identity to make a fraudulent claim for £4,503 in jobseekers allowance, plus approximately £2,000 in social fund benefits.
"The crown say miss Tibakawa assisted others in using and abusing identities," prosecutor Miss Kerry Broome told Croydon Crown Court. "Once she assumed the false identity claims were made for benefits and the like."
Tibakawa entered the UK on July 5, 2007 on condition she stay no longer then six months, but in January 2011 applied to the Home Office for asylum under her true identity, claiming she was the victim of homophobia in Uganda.
She claims she was branded on her inner thighs with a flat iron filled with red-hot coals while growing up in Uganda and her case has benefited from the support of Medical Justice and Human Rights Watch in this country.
She studied for three years under the false identity of Taty Mangangi at Waltham College, but failed to appear for her naturalisation swearing-in ceremony under this name, instead launching the asylum bid.
Tibakawa is currently residing in Home Office accommodation and is in receipt of "pocket money" from the government.
Her lawyer Mr. Patrick Maggs told the court: "She is at the lower end of offending and was more of a customer of Ruth Nabaguzi than a foot soldier.
"She arrived in this country aged eighteen and at that young age she made a series of appalling decisions.
"This is a young woman, if not searching for a better life, then trying to achieve a normal life. Just trying to get the best life she can in this country.
"The crown are taking a monolithic attitude and do not accept her asylum claim and what is hanging over her head at the moment is worse than any custodial sentence."
Judge Nicholas Ainley told a tearful Tibakawa: "There has to be an immediate custodial sentence, but I will make it as short as I can. You allowed false identities to be developed and you adapted one for yourself."
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