Johnson/Maggies Saints and Scroungers

Welcome to Saints & Scroungers, the show that exposes benefit cheats, thieves and liars.

But it does also unearth the people that genuinely need help.

This is the front line in the battle against benefit fraud.

Saints & Scroungers puts the spotlight on benefit thieves who ruthlessly steal millions of pounds

every year from us, the British taxpayer.

And we search out the saints who help put unclaimed cash into the hands of those who need it.

And coming up on today's programme...

Someone's swindling the taxpayer out of hundreds of thousands of pounds,

but is it the glamourous countess, the lady in the wheelchair, or both?

Anybody who describes themselves as the Countess Mariaska Romanov

has a loose relationship with the truth.

And the man stricken by cancer,

genuinely needing benefits, but not knowing where to turn.

What's the obvious question? "Am I going to die?"

That's all you can think of.

But first, the case of the countess and the council.

Now, you might think you know someone well.

Take me, for example - Dominic Littlewood.

You see me now and again, and you know exactly what I do.

But...would you recognise me if I changed my appearance

and suddenly started calling myself Viscount Grandwood?

If there's one thing fraud investigators DO know, it's that appearances can be deceptive.

No-one knows that more than Simon Lane,

who heads up the Fraud Investigation Team at Brent Council.

He's been chasing cheats for 24 years, but even he was shocked by a fraud that totalled nearly £200,000,

ran for 11 years and centred around a countess, a woman who couldn't stand daylight and a park caff.

It all started with a phone call about a certain Marianne Jonson.

We received an anonymous tip-off which said that this lady was running a cafe and also

claiming a number of benefits, including disability benefit.

We then got a second referral about the same person

from one of the council's social workers,

who said she'd seen Miss Jonson in the park, walking her dogs.

She recognised this woman who she knew was claiming to be a disabled client.

It was at that stage when we started the investigation into this lady.

Benefit fraud is a serious accusation.

Marianne Jonson was on record as being paraplegic

and living in a specially adapted ground-floor flat

owned by a housing association.

She was receiving...

..all of which totalled a massive...

Now, the tip-off

is suggesting that Marianne Jonson

is working in a busy council-owned cafe.

If that's true, she's claiming all these benefits illegally.

The first thing we'll do is lots of background checks to try and find out who this person is.

The key starting point in any investigation is to say,

is the person claiming these benefits the same person that's running the cafe?

But most of the cafe's customers knew nothing of a Marianne Jonson.

They knew the boss as Countess Mariaska Romanov, a popular member of the community.

The Countess got stuck into local affairs.

She was a school governor, and was frequently spotted out and about.

She comes across as a larger-than-life character.

She said she was a very wealthy woman, and she distributed this sort of community largesse, if you like.

I used to bump into her in businesses local to me, you know, hairdressers and nail shops.

She was very entertaining. She used to...fill the shop, if you like.

And she was known as the Countess.

"The Countess is coming in today."

So, obviously, that made an impact on people who didn't know her well.

From initial inquiries, it seemed like there were two names connected with the cafe. The plot thickens.

Confused? I know I am.

Look, this is the question - who is this local lady?

Is it A - Marianne Jonson, the woman who runs this caff,

but is also claiming disability living allowance?

Or is it B - Countess Romanov,

an established lady in the community with an expensive lifestyle?

Or is it C - both of them?

'Two women or not, there is one place that seems to connect both names,

'and that is the Roundwood Lodge Cafe.'

-Any idea what sort of caff it is?

-Well, it's certainly well liked in the community.

Quite well patronised by people around here. It's a hub for people that live here. It's in a nice park.

Once she took over, presumably, as she was here a few years, there were no problems?

No. Well, we couldn't get any rent out of her, cos she was claiming she was making a loss.

But the cafe appeared to be well managed, with lots of people coming and going.

-It seemed to be very popular.

-'So there's another issue - '

even though the cafe looks like a profitable business,

the council aren't seeing any rent for it.

Whoever is in charge appears to be pocketing the profits and not declaring them.

Could there be two scams at work - benefit fraud and cooking the books?

-What happened next?

-We look at our paperwork that we've got on the Jonson name, i.e. the person

claiming benefits and the person claiming care payments, and see what we've got on the cafe.

So you don't go in, all guns blazing? You start in the background?

No, we do a lot of background checks before we get to that point.

So the Fraud Investigation Team hit the books and start digging into the records for the cafe.

They also run credit checks.

They're on the lookout for evidence that the woman running the cafe is the same as the woman

claiming the benefits, and they have to get to the bottom of the two different names.

We'd be picking up any links we could find with the name Romanov.

We'd also be looking at, um, things like credit-reference checks,

to see if there are any financial links from the home address

in both the names of Jonson and Romanov.

There were a number of clear connections

within the paperwork once we started looking at things and analysing it.

The first connection is from the cafe records,

which show that food safety inspections have been attended by Marianne Jonson up to 2001.

After that, Jonson's name's replaced by Mariaska Romanov's.

The next step for the team is to check up on the business records.

We contacted Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs,

and established that the Romanov and Jonson identities were linked through the business.

So we knew we were heading in the right direction.

And when they look into Jonson's personal finances, they find even more connections.

We've also, in the meantime, got information coming in

from banks and building societies about the names Jonson and Romanov, and we're finding all these accounts.

We're seeing money moving between accounts, thousands of transactions,

hundreds of thousands of pounds going through over the years.

All this hard work leads the team to a shocking discovery.

They realise that Marianne Jonson and the Countess are one and the same person.

Unbelievable.

And when Simon looks at how the money from Jonson's account

is being spent, he finds frequent shopping trips.

This is a lady that says she needs 24-hour care, seven days a week.

She can't leave her... She's unable to get out of her property.

This is not somebody who would fit the pattern of a frequent shopper.

You're talking about shopping trips two or three times a week.

So let's look at what they've found so far.

They've received two tip-offs saying Marianne Jonson is running a cafe

while claiming benefits she's not entitled to.

They've found Jonson's name on the cafe's business records, along with the name Countess Romanov.

They've found several bank accounts in Jonson's name,

Countess Romanov's and the cafe's, all with money moving between them.

And they've seen bank statements that suggest Jonson goes shopping three times a week.

There are now enough connections to suggest Jonson is committing

a serious fraud and using the alter ego, Mariaska Romanov, to do so.

But Simon needs more definitive proof.

So we're at the point where we need to definitively link

the woman that is running the cafe

with the woman that's claiming benefit.

So Simon puts in place a 24-hour surveillance programme

and begins to monitor comings and goings outside her home. But will he get the evidence he needs?

-What are you going to show me here, Simon?

-This is someone who's supposedly paraplegic.

Here she comes. That's Miss Jonson

putting something in the back of her car. About to get in her car.

Then drive off.

-There were certainly no signs of any mobility problems there at all.

-Exactly.

To all intents and purposes, this must be the evidence you need?

Yeah, this is good evidence for us.

'It's a fantastic step forward.

'With Jonson caught on camera, it looks like Simon has concrete proof

'that her disability claims are false.

'Now they just need to catch her at the cafe to make the final connection.'

But, as so often the case, there's a complication.

To disguise her double life, Jonson developed an alibi in case

anyone spotted her up and about, looking the picture of health.

She told her housing officer and social services

that she had an able-bodied twin sister.

It was a very clever attempt to cover her tracks.

The twin story was created presumably to give her a get-out if anybody had seen her out and about.

She could say, "That was my twin".

But the twin sister was an angle we had to look at,

we really needed to bottom that out. Had that been the case, it may have been that the informer was mistaken

and there was a twin and it was a perfectly legitimate claim.

However many breakthroughs the team have, it seems Jonson is always one step ahead.

Now the pressure is on to prove she doesn't have an able-bodied twin.

Coming up, the massive extent of the fraud becomes clear.

So we've got a significant sum now.

We're talking about in excess of £190,000.

Next, it's farewell, fraudsters, and hello to those thousands

of people who don't know how, or are too proud, to ask for benefits.

We meet the people who help them claim what they deserve.

All these people, we like to call our saints.

Cancer affects one in three.

When people fall ill with it, treatment can be so severe that it stops them from being able to work.

But what many sufferers don't realise is that they could be entitled to benefits.

Hearing that dreadful word "cancer"

aimed directly at you must be one of the most awful things you could ever come across.

But it's not just the physical effect of the illness that takes its toll.

It's also the financial and emotional effect as well.

More than three-quarters of cancer patients suffer financial hardship.

Carlo Langer is one of them.

Carlo was born in Italy but came to England in 1973 and made it his home.

But the life he'd built up for himself was suddenly under threat when he went for a check-up in 2008.

I went to my doctor.

I had a blood test.

And he said, "You've got an aggressive cancer.

"You've got an aggressive prostate cancer."

Carlo had a difficult choice over which treatment to opt for.

'They said, "You've got two choices.

' "We do an operation and take your prostate away,'

"and 90% become impotent and incontinent.

"Or we do this course

"of female hormones

"and radiotherapy.

"You will become impotent and incontinent for a little while,

"but as you get better, you go back to normal."

Obviously, I went for the second option.

The treatment knocked the stuffing out of him.

But the radiotherapy dragged on, and when Carlo was ready to work again

a few months later, he had lost his job.

Suddenly, going through all the problems of having cancer,

you know, to make it worse, your job is not there any more.

So you've got financial worries kicking in now.

-And it's really a dark tunnel in front of you.

-Yeah.

And then, really, that's when I was at my lowest.

I really was at my lowest.

You know, OK, I've got cancer, fine.

But why now, on top of that,

-all these problems with money?

-So was there a fear of losing your flat?

-It's all I've got.

-Yeah.

You know, this is...

After 35 years of hard work, this is it.

During one of his hospital visits, Carlo was told about his local Maggie's Centre.

Maggie's is one of several charities that helps people deal with the effects of cancer.

When somebody tells you that you've got something

that potentially may end your life sooner than later,

having that mortality pushed right in front of your face

really brings up a lot of questions of "Why me? What's happening to my life?

"What's the future going to hold?"

But the future is made even more uncertain for cancer sufferers

with money problems, so the charity also offers financial advice, something Carlo desperately needed.

'I had no more savings.'

I was in debt.

My family was helping me a lot, from Italy.

That's terribly humiliating.

Dependent on family handouts, Carlo was at an all-time low.

Jay Shah has been an advisor at the centre since it opened.

He helps people claim benefits when they have nowhere else to turn.

Give me an idea - for somebody who wasn't claiming, who all of a sudden found out they had cancer,

and ticked all the appropriate boxes, how much difference could that mean weekly, financially?

That could mean approximately up to £500 a week, for example.

-500?

-That's correct.

These are the sort of things which people like Carlo

are too weak, too stressed, too worried, to be doing themselves.

They need you. It's what you do, and you're passionate about it.

And when you've got an illness like cancer, all your...energy,

your mind... You know, you've got this big, heavy cross to bear.

Jay achieved his aim when it came to Carlo, finding him a desperately needed £200 per week in benefits.

We managed to get him the council tax benefit, the pension credit.

His mortgage interest was covered.

The disability living allowance, road tax exemption, the blue parking badge and the taxi card.

What difference has Maggie's made to you?

Changed my life. Changed my life. Financially, mentally.

Has your treatment finished?

I just got my result of the PSA today.

And...

-Thumbs up.

-Thumbs up.

-Over a year now.

-Congratulations on that.

When this programme goes out, there will be people watching

who might be experiencing what you've experienced. Would you have advice for them?

Yes. Look around. The help is there. Ask.

Marianne Jonson is under suspicion of claiming nearly £200,000 worth of benefits she's not entitled to.

The Brent Council fraud team suspects she is using

two identities, Jonson and Romanov, one disabled and one able-bodied.

The latest hurdle the team face is disproving her claim to have a twin sister.

To do this, they're tracking down her birth certificate.

And when they eventually get it, it reveals more than they bargained for.

We did some research through the UK Passport Agency,

and we found that she'd changed her name a number of times from about the age of 21.

Marianne Jonson hasn't just changed her name once, not even twice.

In fact, she has had ten names over 30 years...

including Nina Najib Hamzah II, Harley Pitsillidou,

Bobbi Duxbury and Countess Mariaska Romanov.

With every application for a passport in a new name, she had to state her last one,

and this helped Simon piece together all her identities and link the names as evidence.

'Of all Marianne's names, the most surprising one is actually on her birth certificate.'

She was born a man. Robert Anthony Duxbury.

So Robert Duxbury actually turned out to be...?

The Countess, Mariaska Romanov.

'The sex change wasn't the only revelation on the birth certificate.'

The importance of this document was that it didn't have a time of birth on it.

When you're a twin, you have the time of birth recorded.

-So it was essential from that perspective to disprove the twin theory.

-Right, OK.

It's a turning-point for the case.

The fraud team have now established from her birth certificate that Marianne Jonson didn't have a twin,

and the passport applications provide concrete proof

that she and Mariaska Romanov are the same person.

The two identities had to be kept separate.

In her identity as Marianne Jonson, she pretended to be paraplegic.

When housing officers came round to assess her, she had to convince them she was disabled.

So when they turned up, what would the scenario be?

They'd go into the property, she'd be in bed.

She'd often have the curtains drawn,

because she claimed to be light-sensitive as well as being unable to move and paraplegic.

Claiming to be light-sensitive allows Marianne to cover up

and to keep the rooms of her house dark during social worker visits.

Rather handy if you don't want be recognised when out and about.

The net is closing in on Jonson, but the team still need to find out

if she is making any money from the cafe.

If it's profitable, she would not be entitled to income support.

So we asked her to submit accounts.

It took her a while to do that.

But when she does, the accounts come in.

Looking back at them now, they're clearly understated.

So she tells us she's making a loss so the council don't pressure her for rental income.

-She's a shrewd cookie, isn't she?

-Shrewd cookie, yeah.

Jonson is still blissfully unaware that she was being investigated,

but all that was about to change.

We arranged a sting operation with our environmental health colleagues.

They arranged a food safety inspection.

They obviously need the owner of the cafe to be there for that.

So we got her there. They do the inspection and leave. She's then arrested.

-Immediately afterwards.

-Yeah.

-Bang, caught in the act.

Caught in the act of being the owner of the cafe.

At that point, tell me she put her hands up and said "All right, you've got me, it's a fair cop"!

She didn't say anything. She gave no comment at the first interview at the police station,

and for every subsequent interview, she gave no comment, essentially.

Didn't offer an explanation.

Marianne may not be 'fessing up, but while she's under arrest the cafe's being searched

and some incriminating CCTV footage is seized.

-This is stuff that she's recorded for her own security.

-Yeah.

-And it's helped bring her down.

-Yeah.

-Hmm!

Yeah. That's her there, just walking around.

We'll see her serve some customers in a minute.

In that shot, I don't think you ever would say "that is a criminal".

That is somebody

-who is absolutely...

-Well-respected member of the community.

Her flat is also subjected to a detailed fingertip search,

and the team discover plenty more evidence

that Marianne Jonson isn't in need of benefits.

The evidence that we gained from that was principally around...

photographs that had been stored, which showed Miss Jonson abroad.

No apparent signs of mobility problems. No sign of any walking aids or a wheelchair.

-Expensive furs. Genuine?

-Yeah.

We found evidence of her purchases of these furs through her bank records.

This is a woman who liked to spend the money. She had it rolling in left, right and centre.

She liked the luxuries. Expensive handbags, furs, jewellery. She liked to live the high life.

-She did.

-At the expense of everybody else.

-Yeah.

-One of aliases was a countess. Was there any substance to that?

-She wasn't a countess.

-But she wanted to live the life of one, didn't she?

I suspect she wanted to appear as though she had a lot of wealth and maybe appear as some sort of royalty.

Nearly £200,000 worth of taxpayers' money went into Marianne Jonson's pockets.

The furs and bags they found in the search may point to where some of it went.

But they also found a piece of evidence about the cafe on her computer.

We also get some crucial spreadsheets,

which show that she's deliberately understating the cafe income.

That proves crucial in the court case.

So on top of all the disability benefits, income support and free accommodation

she's had from the Government, Jonson's also been raking in money from the cafe,

not declared it, not paid tax and not paid the rent to the council.

How much was she pulling in? Give me an idea on a weekly basis, in benefits.

From 2004, we're talking about just over £700 a week.

She's milked the system unbelievably, hasn't she?

Yeah, she has milked it.

It's hard to say you're shocked in this job, but in terms of an individual claimant

with two identities, which is effectively what happened here,

it's one of the highest we've seen and one of the most complicated we've had to deal with.

It's taken Simon and his team over two years to pull together all the evidence.

But at last, he has all the proof he needs to present a case against Marianne Jonson.

The trial finally got under way at Harrow Crown Court in February 2010.

She ambled into the court. I mean, she kind of walked as if she had

a genuine disability. It seemed like something that maybe she'd got used to doing.

But after a while, it occurred to me that she seemed to be

making things up on the spot, and things didn't correlate.

Things didn't seem to work out.

She had numerous bank accounts in numerous different names,

different passports.

It all became a bit of a blur, really.

She was obviously playing quite an intelligent game,

and she managed to confuse other people as well, I guess.

She spent ten years claiming benefits she wasn't entitled to, including...

The punishment wasn't small, either.

The judge sentenced her

to four and a half years in jail.

Some people who get caught out say,

"It's a fair cop." But she didn't, and so she got a very large jail sentence.

Sometimes the court likes to hear that people are contrite, don't they?

My own personal view is that anybody who describes themselves

as the Countess Mariaska Romanov

has a loose relationship with the truth.

I think it's a great shame that she didn't use her talents

to promote the cafe, cos it was a successful cafe.

It still is a successful cafe.

But I'm glad the investigation is over, glad we got a good result.

So whoever that anonymous caller was,

thanks very much.

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