Ghanaian benefits cheat busted in UK

• Ghanaian-born Angel Jackson acquired property portfolio without 'ever working a single day'
  
  
• She was confronted at home but claimed to be sister of the wanted woman
  
  
• Moment of her arrest revealed ahead of BBC's Britain on the Fiddle tonight
  
  
• She created lies to claim housing benefit, income support and compensation

This is the dramatic moment a conniving benefit fraudster who swindled the taxpayer out of nearly £200,000 was arrested before being jailed for seven years.

Angel Jackson, 52, of Mitcham, Surrey, used three different identities and acquired a £1million property portfolio without 'ever working a single day'.

She was confronted at home but claimed to be the sister of Angel Duffy - which was in fact her second identity - and said she would 'get my passport tomorrow'.

But police held up a photo of Mrs Duffy, saying it looked 'very similar' to her, and the woman was arrested on suspicion of fraud by false representation.
The moment of her arrest was revealed in a preview of the first episode of series two of the BBC's Britain on the Fiddle tonight, which looks at tax and benefit fraud.

Ghanaian-born Jackson created a complex web of lies to claim housing benefit, income support and compensation between 2002 and 2012.

Croydon Crown Court heard last year how she claimed she was wheelchair-bound but was spotted on CCTV using the treadmill at her luxury block's private gym.

Jackson - who fraudulently obtained £191,000 - claimed for properties she didn't live in, in the names of people who didn't exist, and for accidents that didn't happen.

The prosecution last November even admitted that they did not know her real name or date of birth, and she was found guilty of 32 charges relating to fraud.
Judge Adam Hiddleston described her as a 'vain and self-important person' with a 'staggering contempt for the court', branding her a 'professional fraudster'.
Jackson, who already owned a house in Mitcham, bought two swanky flats in the same block with its own gym in Croydon in 2005 for more than £300,000.

She fraudulently claimed housing benefit for each of them and also tried to wring every penny in compensation from two car accidents using invented passengers.

However, she was caught when doctors spotted two separate X-rays on two separate claims were almost identical.

When her home was raided in 2012, officers found £22,000 in £50 notes in a wardrobe, reams of counterfeit paperwork and 12 mobile phones.

Jackson lured her soon-to-be husband, Irish-born Thomas Duffy, by telling him she was a 'lady of traditional values', before buying a house with him in 2002.
At the time she was still claiming housing benefit and went behind his back to get his UK residency to support her own.

The pair had married on Valentine's Day in 2002, but she stopped him from telling his family and yet she didn't even allow him to live with her.
The court heard 'whenever he needed to sign something presented to him by his wife, his glasses would disappear'.

In July 2005, Jackson bought another property, a £150,000 flat in south London, in her husband's name, without him knowing - and two months later bought another flat in the same building, this time in her own name, for £152,500.

She lied to her husband that the home they owned together was being repossessed and that he had to move out - all to support a housing benefit claim she had made.

Jackson got four-and-a-half years in jail for the fraud, two years for creating false documents, and six months for illegally evicting the tenants - all consecutively.

After the verdict last year, Croydon councillor Hamida Ali said: 'Angel Jackson's fraud cheated taxpayers in Croydon and across the UK out of thousands of pounds, so I'm very glad to see the court has found in our favour.'