Ubiribo/Leech Saints and Scroungers


Ubiribo/Leech

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What makes this country great is that we give money to people who need it,

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but the only problem with that is, wherever there's money, there are people who want to steal it.

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Welcome to the world of Saints and Scroungers.

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Saints and Scroungers puts the spotlight

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on benefit thieves who ruthlessly steal millions of pounds every year from the British taxpayer.

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And it highlights the plight of men and women who are too proud

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or simply don't know how to claim the benefits they deserve.

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The saints get help and the scroungers

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get tracked down by the fraud investigators

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who put an end to their devious scams.

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And coming up on today's programme: A suitcase full of documentation

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sets off alarm bells in Croydon's fraud office.

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That raised questions as to what this was doing in somebody's garden shed.

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And a loving father who takes on an unfair law.

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It just seems crazy that somebody who suspends

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their studies for illness, you know, serious illness, doesn't get a penny.

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But first, most fraud investigations involve tip-offs,

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but not all of them come from the bottom of a garden.

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Look, it's a bloke thing. We like rummaging round in garden sheds.

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Just look at all the useful stuff in here, stepladders, bits of wood, come in very handy.

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Power tools, I like a bit of DIY and...

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what is this?!

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Surely not a pile of incriminating evidence?

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No-one would be stupid enough to leave that lying around - would they?

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Meet Juliet Ubiribo, a single mum of two.

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Born in Nigeria, but naturalised a British citizen.

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She was living in Croydon in south London and claiming thousands

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of pounds worth of housing benefit which went to her landlord, Mr Neburagho.

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She was also hiding a secret about him which she thought would never be discovered, but she was wrong.

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Because when the fraud department at Croydon Council

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get a sniff of something suspicious, they get the investigators on to it.

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And in this case, it was Zoe Neale.

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I'll let her tell you the story.

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In 2003, Juliet Ubiribo came to Croydon Council and she claimed housing benefit on the basis she was

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a single parent with two children, she was on low earnings and she needed help to pay her rent.

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She claimed that her landlord was Mr Neburagho, and she and Mr Neburagho

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produced documentation which said that he did not live at the property, he lived in Acton.

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So, nothing out of the ordinary so far.

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Juliet stayed at the property for four years.

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During that time she claimed a total of...

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..in housing and council tax benefit.

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Most of it, just over £40,000, was housing benefit and it went

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to her landlord, Mr Neburagho, but then there was a change in her circumstances.

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In 2007 she came to the council to say that she needed to be re-housed

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because the house was being sold, her landlord was selling up.

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And he was. Nothing wrong with a landlord selling a house

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or a tenant needing help to find somewhere to live.

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So far, this pair had done little to attract attention to themselves.

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However, the house in question happened to be sold to a fraud investigator from Croydon Council.

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Believe it or not, they move home as well, you know.

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The colleague moved in and eventually they found in the garden shed a suitcase full of documentation.

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This documentation was copies of financial statements, copies of letters from bailiffs, and a lot

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of immigration documentation belonging to people, who, as far as they knew didn't live at the house.

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And being a fraud investigator, the new owner went through

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this paperwork with interest and one particular piece of paper caught their well-trained eye.

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Among the items, they found a lot of correspondence from debt collecting agencies, in the name of Neburagho,

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which was strange as he was not supposed to live at the address.

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So, the alarm bells started to ring, but not too loudly at this stage.

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Yes, it was strange that a letter had been sent to Mr Neburagho, even though he didn't live there,

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but he was the landlord, he owned the property, maybe there was a mix-up, so, the story continues.

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Juliet Ubiribo came back to Croydon Council, claiming she was homeless,

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on the basis that her ex-partner is being abusive to her.

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Now, claiming she was suffering from abuse and homelessness was a serious matter and anyone in this situation

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is quite rightly put at the top of the list for a council house,

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but Zoe noticed something strange about the phone number

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that Juliet had given for an ex-partner,

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and it's often these little things that trip up the big fraudsters.

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The phone number she supplied for her ex-partner

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matched the phone number as being Mr Neburagho, who's also her landlord.

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Wow! Those alarm bells were definitely ringing now.

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Could Juliet's ex-partner be her landlord,

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the man she had paid over £40,000 worth of housing benefit to?

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And what about the documents found in the shed, the visa applications and immigration papers?

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Could they be tied in to this case as well?

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What had begun as a simple application for help finding

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a new home had grown into a potential fraud case.

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Zoe decided she needed back-up.

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At about that time, we started working with UKBA,

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the UK Border Agency, to look at the immigration aspect of the case.

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Because Mr Neburagho was supposed to be a British-born Nigerian, Juliet Ubiribo was born in Nigeria,

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but was a naturalised British citizen, but enquiries showed she was married to Mr Mayomi,

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who was a Nigerian national, but had applied to come to the UK on a spouse visa.

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So, Juliet was married - to a Mr Nelson Mayomi.

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This meant she had lied on the statement she made claiming to be a single parent.

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Mr Mayomi was her husband and it looked as though her ex-partner could have been her landlord,

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but nothing is clear at this stage.

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So, it's time to meet Tina Lyonette,

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a criminal investigator at the UK Border Agency.

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I want to get the low-down on the three people involved in this case -

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Juliet Ubiribo, Mr Mayomi and Mr Neburagho.

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How did the three names in this case come to your attention?

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Originally, Croydon Council were doing an investigation into

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-Mr Mayomi and Juliet Ubiribo for benefit fraud.

-Is that the happy couple in that picture?

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Yep, that's Juliet and Mr Mayomi.

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OK, so their names came to your attention.

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-Mm-hmm.

-And what about the third one, who was that?

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-Croydon Council had the landlord listed as a Mr Neburagho.

-OK.

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I looked on all of the Home Office systems, couldn't find any trace of him at all in the beginning,

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so we were a bit stuck as to what his immigration status was.

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But then we did wonder, perhaps he was British. So I got a copy,

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I asked the passport service to check whether there was

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a British passport in that name, that date of birth and there was.

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So I got hold of a copy of the photograph.

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Matched it to the photograph on the file we had for Mr Mayomi and they were a match.

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-They were the same person.

-So, Tina believed that the husband

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and landlord were one and the same, operating under two different identities. Very sneaky.

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Now, you can't always rely on photos, because

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age, camera angles and haircuts all affect the way you look.

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So more proof was needed, but one thing seemed increasingly clear -

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Juliet's housing benefit money could have been going straight

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into her husband's pockets and Zoe was convinced there could be more to this case.

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Turning the spotlight onto the Nelson Mayomi identity, she dug deeper

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and being a financial investigator, she has more powers than most.

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The investigators have quite a lot of powers already under the Data Protection Act,

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but as a financial investigator, I can go back further.

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for example if someone was investigating a benefit claim,

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it's two years' worth of overpayment, because of the Proceeds of Crime Act, I can go back six years' worth and

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take into account six years' worth of income and transfers and how they obtain their assets.

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I do like the sound of that Proceeds of Crime Act.

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In a nutshell, if Zoe thinks someone has stolen benefit money and obtained assets as a result of their

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criminal activity, she can go after every illegal penny they've made and make them pay it back.

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In this case, Zoe knew Nelson Mayomi was Juliet's husband and possibly her landlord.

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What she didn't know, though, was how he made a living and she was in for a shock.

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As part of the investigation we did business record checks,

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we found out he was the director of a taxi firm in London.

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As part of my investigation, I'd been looking at his accounts, I found

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in just over a year, £400,000 has gone through the business accounts.

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Oh, yes, you heard it right, £400,000.

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And further investigations clearly showed that he was

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enjoying the lifestyle that goes with that sort of money.

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My inquiries when I'd been going through the business records, shows that he spent £14,000 on alcohol,

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and this is bulk purchases of champagne and spirits.

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£25,000 of business money was spent on a watch.

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About £2,000 that's been spent on chandeliers

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and those have been exported to Nigeria.

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So, the council thought they were paying benefits to Juliet Ubiribo's landlord,

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when in actual fact, they were paying it to her husband and he was running a very successful taxi firm.

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Clearly, this couple were doing all right for themselves, and £25,000 for a watch?

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Time was running out for this pair of cheats.

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Coming up, there's another breakthrough in the Ubiribo case.

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The fingerprints matched and it's a strong piece of evidence.

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From the scroungers ripping off the system to the people we call our saints, those individuals

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who help put money into the pockets of people in genuine need and the people who are too proud,

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or simply don't know how to claim what's due to them.

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The benefit system is there for those people that genuinely need it.

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When it works, it is brilliant.

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But occasionally, it doesn't.

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That's when people who need it and genuinely deserve it can't get it,

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but people power can sometimes change all that.

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Ian Leech is a loving dad and devoted football fan.

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When he moved to Burton-on-Trent in 2007

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with wife Julie and daughters Melissa and Becky, life couldn't have been better.

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Life was good in every way for all of us.

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We'd just moved in to the house and everything was brilliant.

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Eldest daughter Melissa was also having the time of her life.

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She was studying psychology at Aston University in Birmingham.

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She'd recently been elected editor of the Aston Times paper and on Saturdays there was football,

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a passion she shared with her dad.

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Saturdays were our time. She, you know, she was just brilliant company to be with. She was very confident.

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Yeah, she was just an amazing person.

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But, in early 2007, Melissa started to feel unwell.

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Mel started losing weight at Easter time.

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Which wasn't a great surprise considering the hectic lifestyle she was leading at university.

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Then over the summer she had a mouth infection, then a suspected chest infection, there was tonsillitis.

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She then started getting very breathless. We took her to hospital.

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They again confirmed tonsillitis.

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So we came home, but the...

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symptoms continued to show themselves and she, you know...

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was diagnosed the day after her 20th birthday with lymphoma.

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The family were absolutely devastated.

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But they were confident Mel would pull through and the prognosis from the doctors was also reassuring.

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After six rounds of chemotherapy and maybe some radiotherapy,

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they expected Mel to make a full recovery.

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Initially, Mel was determined to stay at university and continue her course whilst having the treatment,

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but then something happened that forced her to change her mind.

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We were at a supermarket and she just collapsed in front of my eyes.

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I managed to catch her.

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We knew from that moment, that day, that really was when we decided,

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"No, we can't do the uni thing and the recovery, it must be one or the other."

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That's when she took the decision to suspend her studies.

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This is when her fight against the disease and against the benefit system began.

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I've come to Burton-on-Trent to meet Ian and find out more.

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Obviously she had to come home, but now she's not studying,

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she's not working, how did she cope with money?

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Well, basically, myself and my wife.

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She hadn't drawn on her student loan because the illness was diagnosed in August.

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She hadn't actually drawn on a student loan, so we didn't pursue

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that avenue, because she wasn't studying, so we applied for benefits.

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-And what happened?

-We were refused.

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We were refused income support.

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Disablement living allowance, you have to wait three months before you can apply for it.

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We were also told that it then takes three months to process.

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And we applied for incapacity benefit, but again, because she was

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a student and she hadn't paid enough stamps, as they say, then she didn't qualify for that and couldn't

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qualify for that for six months. So, we were left with nothing.

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What was the main reason that benefits were using as their excuse to reject this claim?

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They said because she'd suspended her studies, rather than abandon them, she was still classed

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as a student, and therefore, as a student, she wasn't eligible for any financial support.

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It wasn't that we wanted or Mel wanted

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loads and loads of money, she just needed some money, just to live on.

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She'd gone from being at university and being very independent to suddenly having to ask

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Mum and Dad for everything, and when you're dealing with

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the fact that you've got cancer as well, that's a very difficult thing.

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It just adds to the pressure, to the burden.

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Couldn't you at that point just have said, "Cancel the studies," and then got the benefits?

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We could have done. The problem we had with that is that

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Melissa was very much into her student life and she loved it.

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It was one of her goals, one of her aims was to go back

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to university in 12 months' time and carry on where she left off.

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Tragically, Melissa never got the chance to carry on where she left off.

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Because in early 2008, her condition deteriorated dramatically.

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She had a stem cell transplant, and the idea of the transplant was to hold the disease at bay

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because it was very aggressive, to hold it for 12 weeks in order for her to have a bone marrow transplant.

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That was her only chance of a cure at that point.

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Sadly it held it for about seven weeks. On April 1st, of all dates,

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April's Fool's Day, we were given the news that there was nothing more that they could do for her.

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She remained in hospital for a week, ten days and then we took her home

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and we set up her bed underneath the stairs for her, so she was with us.

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She had two wishes, one was to be with her family when she passed away, and the other was that she wanted

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to die at home, she didn't want to die in hospital or in a hospice.

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And thankfully, we managed to do that, and she passed away in the early hours of 11th May.

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Words are never enough to describe the loss of a child.

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Mel couldn't beat the cancer, but in memory of his daughter,

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Ian was determined to continue fighting for benefits for students like her.

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She was very adamant before she passed away, that we continued with this.

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There were times during the illness when I almost gave up.

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I was continually hitting brick walls and not getting anywhere.

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There were times, dealing with Mel as ill as she was, and also fighting the Government at the same time.

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It took a lot, but the current system was wrong and that, coupled with

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Mel's desire to get it sorted, that's what made me fight and continue.

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So in honour of Mel's life, courage and fighting spirit, Ian worked tirelessly to change the law.

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So it started with letters to your MP. At some point, they started to sit up and listen to you.

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I actually told them in the letters that I wasn't going to go away.

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My MP contacted a guy called James Plasket,

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the MP at the Department for Work and Pensions at the time.

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He, again, the reply initially wasn't a favourable one,

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but we kept going back to him.

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I started copying him into letters that I was sending to my MP.

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He began to listen and really when he started listening, with him being at

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the Department for Work and Pensions, that's when things started to change.

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And that wasn't the only thing that started to change.

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Losing his eldest daughter made Ian re-evaluate his life.

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He had spent almost ten years working as an administrator

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for Staffordshire Police, and he decided it was time to move on.

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I've recently changed my job.

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I work for the Lymphoma Association, which is something that

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I would never have done had it not been for Mel's illness.

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Mel used to go on the chat-room on the internet and talk to other people who'd been affected.

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She also contacted the helpline as well, and they're just a great help

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and were a support to Mel, and they've been a great support to ourselves since Mel died.

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-You're now working with them full-time, so you're part of that support group.

-Yes, it's good.

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And that's not where the changes end.

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I started doing a couple of these charity rides a year.

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I'm not a particularly keen cyclist, but it's something that I can do.

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I can't run marathons, unfortunately, but I can cycle. So that's what I do.

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And it's something that Ian does extremely well.

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He has cycled 600 miles for charity and helped raise over £13,000 through bike rides

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and other fundraising activities, but much more importantly, he's helped change the law.

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I caught up with him to hear all about it.

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So Ian, finally, you're a man with something to smile about?

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Yeah, certainly. We've had news from the Government that they're making the changes, and it's very positive.

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Basically now any student who falls ill with a long-term illness, not just cancer,

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but any long-term illness, and they have to suspend their studies for a time, they will get benefits.

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And that's nationwide now. You've changed that law.

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-You must be an extremely proud man?

-You don't think, "I'm changing the law."

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You just think, "This is wrong," you have to do what you can to put it right.

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Thankfully, through dogged persistence and emails,

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we've done it. Yeah.

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-Do you think Mel would be proud?

-Yeah, I do, I'd like to think so.

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-What would she say to you now if she could?

-She'd probably say Liverpool will finish higher

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than Everton in the league this season and then she'd probably say "Well done, Dad, we did it."

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-Yeah. And what would you say to her?

-Yeah, you're probably right!

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Ian has experienced something that no parent ever should, the loss of

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a child, but he's channelled all his grief into something really

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positive and he's made changes now that will affect hundreds of families in this country.

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He's shown no signs of slowing down and for one, I hope he never does.

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Over in Croydon, the council's fraud team and the UK Border Agency

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are hot on the trail of Juliet Ubiribo.

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Her housing benefits worth thousands of pounds have been paid directly to her landlord, Mr Neburagho.

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But documents accidentally left in the shed when she moved house revealed a secret.

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Her landlord might be her husband, Mr Mayomi.

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There were false statements, double identities and immigration issues involved.

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This couple had to be stopped and financial investigator Zoe was well on the case.

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January 2010, we had meetings with the police and the UKBA, and we decided the offences were

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sufficiently serious enough for us to take this further, and to visit the house and the business property

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at the same time and to arrest both Ubiribo and Mayomi.

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We searched the home address in January 2010

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and this is some of what we found.

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Photocopy of Mayomi's Nigerian passport.

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Three of Ubiribo's passports.

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A copy of their wedding certificate in Nigeria.

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We found immigration applications,

0:22:360:22:40

copies of documentation relating to the business.

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We've also found a wedding DVD of a marriage blessing that they had in 2006, which was interesting because

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at that time she was claiming benefit on the basis she was an unmarried single parent.

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-I, Juliet...

-I, Juliet...

-Give you, Nelson, this ring...

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-Give you, Nelson, this ring...

-As a sign of our marriage.

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-As a sign of our marriage.

-With my body, I honour you.

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-With my body, I honour you.

-All that I have, I give to you.

0:23:040:23:07

-All that I have, I give to you.

-And all that I have I share with you.

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And all that I have I share with you.

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They had the evidence, now they had to arrest the couple.

0:23:120:23:17

Mr Mayomi wasn't at the house when they started their search, but then their fortunes changed.

0:23:170:23:23

A man arrived at the property. He identified himself to the police and to the UKBA as being Mr Mayomi.

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He was arrested and taken to Croydon Police Station.

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He was asked if he'd ever been in trouble with the police before, and he said no.

0:23:320:23:37

And he was telling the truth. No-one with the name of Mr Mayomi had

0:23:370:23:40

ever been in trouble with the law, but his alias, Mr Neburagho HAD.

0:23:400:23:45

We were aware that possibly he'd already been arrested for drunk driving in the identity of Neburagho.

0:23:450:23:51

When they matched the fingerprints they realised yes, he had been arrested as Neburagho,

0:23:510:23:56

and we believe that is possibly why he admitted in interview that he was Mr Neburagho, but also Mr Mayomi.

0:23:560:24:02

So, the game was finally up for Mr Mayomi and his alias, Mr Neburagho.

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The photos may not be identical, but the matching fingerprints removed all doubt.

0:24:080:24:13

He WAS Juliet's husband and her landlord.

0:24:130:24:17

This confirmed our suspicion that he was the same person, but with two identities.

0:24:180:24:23

And Nelson Mayomi had used his second identity to enter the UK illegally.

0:24:230:24:28

On the visa application for his visa he said he'd never been in the UK before, but once we found out

0:24:280:24:34

the name Neburagho and that there was a British passport, and all of the other evidence

0:24:340:24:38

-shows to the fact that he'd been here since the early 90s.

-So, Mr Mayomi was arrested.

0:24:380:24:42

One criminal down, one to go.

0:24:420:24:45

Juliet Ubiribo was arrested on the same day, also questioned at Croydon Police Station.

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She has made false statements claiming to be a single parent,

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whereas in reality she was married, she was also married to her landlord which affected her housing benefit

0:24:530:24:59

and both Neburagho and Ubiribo have both provided false statements to the council in the way of letters

0:24:590:25:05

and documents purporting that they are both separate, that they're not related and that he is her landlord.

0:25:050:25:11

Juliet Ubiribo and her husband Nelson Mayomi eventually pleaded

0:25:110:25:16

guilty to all the offences they had been charged with,

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including benefit fraud and immigration offences.

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On 13th August 2010 at Croydon Crown Court, they were told they'd have to repay...

0:25:240:25:31

..and THEN they were sentenced.

0:25:380:25:41

Mr Mayomi has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison.

0:25:440:25:48

His offences were described by the judge as "cynical, self-centred and self-serving."

0:25:490:25:54

Juliet Ubiribo's been sentenced to 18 months in prison, but suspended for two years.

0:25:560:26:02

However, she also has to do 200 hours of community work, that's unpaid work.

0:26:020:26:06

She's also been tagged which means for four months between the hours of

0:26:060:26:11

9pm to 6am she has to stay at home and cannot leave the home premises.

0:26:110:26:15

She has been warned if she breaks the condition

0:26:150:26:18

of her sentence, she will be back in court and will go to prison.

0:26:180:26:21

And it doesn't end there, the UK Border Agency will seek

0:26:220:26:25

to remove Mr Mayomi from the country and Zoe's going after the assets.

0:26:250:26:30

I'm developing the case further, under the Proceeds of Crime Act

0:26:300:26:34

to ensure that they have not benefited from their criminal behaviour.

0:26:340:26:38

This will mean eventually they'll have to repay more than the housing benefit overpayment.

0:26:380:26:44

They had scammed over £40,000 of taxpayer's money and probably

0:26:450:26:49

would have got away with it if it wasn't for that mislaid suitcase.

0:26:490:26:53

That one piece of lost luggage cost them big time.

0:26:530:26:57

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