Court in London sentenced the five Bulgarians who stole £54 million in UK’s biggest ever benefits fraud (update)
The five Bulgarians who are the perpetrators of the largest case of benefit fraud in England and Wales have been sentenced to between three and eight years of imprisonment.
The gang admitted to fraudulently embezzling £54.
They made thousands of false claims for Universal Credit between 2016 and 2021.
The sentences were heard today, May 30, with tears in their eyes.
Multi-million-pound scam: Five Bulgarians convicted in UK’s largest-ever benefits fraud (update)
In a nearly 3-hour sitting, Judge David Aaronberg pronounced the sentences in the biggest such case in UK history.
Patritsia Paneva, 27, who started working for the crime group when she was just 19, started crying when she found out she would be jailed for 3 years and 2 months.
28-year-old Stoyanov got 4 years.
Tsvetka Todorova, who was arrested while trying to leave the UK, got 3 years, because of the time she has already spent under house arrest and in custody. She will be released today and possibly extradited to Bulgaria.
Those named as leaders - Galina Nikolova, 39, was sentenced to 8 years of imprisonment and Gyunesh Ali was sentenced for fraud "on an industrial scale" to 7 years and 3 months.
The centre of one of the biggest benefit fauds lied behind the façade of an unremarkable shop in north London. When police raided the home of its employee, Galina Nikolova, they found £750,000 in cash.
Karen Priest, investigator: 'You could say we were handed the case like a platter. There was so much evidence. We expected that when we carried out a search we would find something, but not on this scale. When we saw what they had, we knew we were on the right track."
More than 18,000 messages exchanged between those involved in the scheme, wads of banknotes stuffed into shopping bags and suitcases, as well as a luxury car and designer goods including jackets, blazers, watches and glasses were a small part of the evidence seized. British prosecutors also publicly showed video footage of Bulgarians throwing £20 notes in the air. Gyunesh Ali, attempted to escape justice on the Island and returned to Bulgaria, but was sent back for trial at the request of the British authorities.
Ben Reid, lead prosecutor in the case: 'It is clear that the leader of this criminal group was Gyunesh Ali. He laid the foundations of this scheme. Ali then 'trained' the rest of the gang how to operate, and Nikolova made something of a branch of the scheme."
Allegedly using more than 6,000 false benefit claims from the welfare system in England and Wales, the group, which operated from 2016 until it was broken up in 2021, managed to cause nearly £100 million worth of damage, but only half that amount has been proven. This is not the end of the investigation, which identified three 'benefit factories' in north London that damaged the British welfare system to the tune of £54 million. The prosecution is preparing more cases, including in Bulgaria, in an attempt to recover the amount.
