Mafuta/ Charters Saints and Scroungers

Saints and Scroungers puts the spotlight on benefit thieves,

those who ruthlessly steal millions of pounds from the British taxpayer.

But we also search out the saints, the people who put unclaimed cash

into the hands of those that really deserve it.

Saints and Scroungers is all about busting benefit thieves

who steal millions every year, and the crack team of investigators

determined to scupper their devious scams.

We also shine a light on those who genuinely need the money

and the people who help them get it.

They are our saints.

The saints get help, and the fraudsters get their comeuppance.

Coming up on today's show...

the charity worker who abandoned her principles and ended up

lining her own pockets

with over £31,000 worth of illegally claimed benefits.

At this point in the interview, I was thinking to myself,

"Well, I know charity begins at home, but you are having a laugh."

And we meet the devoted husband and father who,

after a life of self-sacrifice, suddenly found himself in dire need.

My savings went right down, right down.

And it got to a point where I thought,

"If this goes on, in a couple of years I'm going to have nothing."

There are some people who have had a hard start in life,

and they turn their experiences round to help others.

What happens when greed takes over

and they turn from saint to scrounger?

Meet Memory Mafuta.

This 39-year-old mum of three

was orphaned as a young girl in Zimbabwe,

but thanks to charity sponsorship she was able to receive an education

and eventually came over to England, where she worked

as a nurse in various care homes.

Settled in Southend-on-Sea and determined to give something back,

she decided to set up a charity

which supplied medical aid to orphans in her homeland.

But, while on the face of it Memory was apparently leading

a blameless life, juggling work, family and her charity fundraising,

it seems she was also lying to the council

and making off with £31,072.75 worth

of ill-gotten benefits.

Grace Grimwade is a visiting officer for the Revenues and Benefits team

from Southend-on-Sea Borough Council.

It's her job to make regular checks on people who are on benefits,

to make sure they're still entitled to them.

Memory Mafuta was claiming housing benefit and council tax benefit

from the council, and so was subject to these routine enquiries.

My colleague had previously visited Mrs Mafuta in 2004,

when she said she was

living on wages from a nursing home.

He then visited her again in 2007

when she said the nursing home had closed down

and she was now living on handouts from the church,

didn't have any regular income at all.

A couple of years later, and it was time for the next check-up.

This time, it was Grace's turn to visit.

So, on the appointed evening,

she turned up at the house where Memory was living at that time.

The first thing Memory told her was that she was still

living on church handouts

and, if anything, her situation had got worse.

But, looking around, Grace wasn't convinced.

She'd recently had a new baby, the baby stuff was all new,

the flat itself was very comfortably furnished.

She had two mobile phones, a fax machine...

During the actual visit Mrs Mafuta received a phone call,

and she replied to the person on the other line,

"I'm in a meeting at the moment, I will phone you back later."

At this point in the interview, I was thinking to myself,

"Well, I know charity begins at home, but you are having a laugh."

Along with the nice furnishings and 50-inch plasma TV,

Grace noticed something else which didn't quite add up.

As well as the baby, Memory also had two other children living with her

who had recently arrived from Zimbabwe.

What Grace wanted to know was, as an unemployed single parent,

how was Memory supporting her family?

She wasn't receiving any child benefit, any income support,

any child tax credit for these children, which raised my suspicions

that, well, the money is definitely coming from some other source.

Grace came away from her visit convinced Memory was lying to her,

and she wasn't happy about it.

I was so incensed, I went straight into the fraud office

and told them, "Right, this one is definitely taking the mickey.

"Who wants to take this case up?"

Paul Broadbent is a Housing Benefit Investigation Officer

with Southend-on-Sea Council.

When he heard Grace's account

of her routine visit to Memory Mafuta,

he jumped straight on the case and immediately pulled up

all the information the council had on Memory and her benefits history.

Mrs Mafuta claimed housing and council tax benefit

from Southend-on-Sea Borough Council

because she needed help to pay her rent.

She claimed benefit from August 2003 to January 2010.

So, Memory had a seven-year history of claiming housing benefit

and council tax benefit.

But Paul also saw that, although she was on record

as having three children, being a lone parent and having zero income,

she was not claiming either income support or Jobseekers' Allowance.

We found it highly unusual

that Mrs Mafuta decided not to apply for those benefits,

and we decided to conduct a more thorough look

into her circumstances and background.

Then Paul noticed something else rather unusual.

It seems Memory had told Southend-on-Sea Council

that she didn't have a bank account,

and had asked for her benefits to be paid to her by cheque

that she could exchange for cash.

When we did our credit reference checks, we identified

a number of accounts to Mrs Mafuta at her address,

that didn't appear to have been declared

at any time during her claim to benefit.

Memory's memory was obviously not that great,

because she'd forgotten all about the bank accounts she had.

Of course, there's no crime

in opening as many bank accounts as she likes.

What Paul was interested in was what was inside them.

We looked at the bank accounts and noticed that the accounts

held significant sums of money,

typically between £6,000 and £14,000,

certainly enough to affect her entitlement to benefits.

So, Grace's first suspicions were right.

Far from living on the poverty line with no income, as she claimed,

Memory had several bank accounts, each one containing

between £6,000 and £14,000.

For Paul, it was a major breakthrough,

but what he wanted to know was,

if Memory was capable of lying about the money,

what else could she be lying about?

We had evidence to suggest she might have an undeclared partner

residing at the property, so we made an investigation

and extensive enquiries to prove that was the case.

Being a single mother without anyone to help pay the bills

was an important part of Memory's original benefits claim.

After some digging, Paul discovered she was indeed living with a man,

but Paul needed to find out how involved with Memory

and her family this man actually was.

For all he knew, he could just be a tenant.

Mrs Mafuta has three children.

When we checked the birth certificates,

they showed that the father was BLEEP,

and the address they provided was the address behind me.

So, let me get this straight - the father of her three children

lives with her in the family home,

and Memory still considers herself a single mother?

Having established that Memory had lied about her savings

and her relationship, now Paul needed to find out

whether she was also lying about her lack of income.

To do this, he needed to go back to her bank accounts.

We looked at Mrs Mafuta's bank statements.

They showed a lot of deposits from a number of employers,

so naturally, the assumption is that she might have been working.

We managed to identify ten employers.

We got the details for Mrs Mafuta from several of those employers,

and one for Mr BLEEP.

The employers confirmed that Mrs Mafuta had been working

throughout her claim to housing and council tax benefit,

and also listed her partner as a next of kin.

So, the woman who claimed she'd lost her job in a nursing home in 2007

and hasn't worked since turns out to have been employed

at not one, but several different care homes since then,

earning an income of between £20,000 and 30,000 a year.

But how had she got away with it?

Further investigation revealed

that Memory had gone to great lengths to avoid detection.

Mrs Mafuta appeared to have two National Insurance numbers.

She had one that she was receiving benefits under,

and another one she appeared to be working under.

Because of those two National Insurance numbers,

we believed that she was concealing her activities in order

to claim benefits that she knew she was not entitled to.

By now, Paul had built up a pretty watertight case

against Memory Mafuta,

showing how she'd been systematically defrauding

Southend-on-Sea Council for many years.

One person who wasn't surprised was the woman who first smelt a rat

all those months ago - Grace Grimwade.

I was absolutely delighted that they'd done enough digging

to bring all this to the surface, but it just made me

more and more angry that people like this abuse the system

the way they do, and get away with it.

Next, it's farewell scroungers and hello to the saints -

the innocent men and women all over the UK in dire need

of government help,

and the people who show them the way to claim what they deserve.

When the ones you love need help, you'll do anything you can

to make their life that little bit easier.

But what happens when you're the one that falls on hard times?

Where can you turn?

Derek Charters had worked hard his entire life

and cared for his invalid wife

and his elderly mother without ever asking for help from the state.

With his only son David having grown up and left,

and his wife and mother passed away,

Derek was now living alone. He was also an invalid himself,

having survived the battle with cancer.

As if that wasn't enough, he was facing serious money troubles.

Derek had been told

that a £12,000 work pension he had got when he retired

meant he couldn't claim benefits.

So he was forced to live off this money alone.

My savings went right down, right down.

I got to the point where I thought if this goes on,

in a couple of years' time,

I'm going to have nothing.

Derek thought his situation was hopeless.

He had resigned himself to losing the council house he grew up in

because he could no longer afford the rent and upkeep.

Just then, he spotted an advert for Age UK North Tyneside

and made the decision to go along and talk to them.

Jill Davidson is the information centre manager.

I met Derek Charters on the front desk, on customer services.

I just happened to be there one day and in Derek came.

He had a newspaper clipping and he said,

"I know you're not going to be able to help us."

I said, "Well, tell us a little bit more and let's see if we can."

I read that article and he says it tells me that people over 50

can get help from Age UK and perhaps get benefits.

He said, "I've checked this and I can't".

I said, "OK, how about if we sat down together, in a couple of days' time?

"I've got an appointment, let's work it out."

Benefit advice is one of the most sought-after services

that Age UK North Tyneside provide.

Over half the people who contact the centre are after financial help.

Most people come to us for practical help and support,

with filling in their application forms.

Because they're quite long, 40-plus pages, it can be quite difficult

for older people to do that themselves.

We can take all that burden off them.

We do try to help everybody as much as possible,

but there are some people that, unfortunately, don't qualify

and they're not entitled to benefits.

Early the next week, Derek came in for his appointment with Jill

and brought with a detailed list of his accounts and outgoings.

What was clear to me when Derek came in

was that within a short time, perhaps 18 months or so,

he would have no savings left at all.

Derek's situation is very common.

People genuinely look and think, "Right, what do I pay this week?

"Do I buy that extra food that I need? Do I turn the heating down?

"Do I pay my rent?" and that sort of balancing up.

They're not balancing up luxuries,

they're balancing up very basic items that you need to live.

After looking through all of his paperwork,

Jill was able to give Derek her verdict.

As soon as I saw Derek's financial situation,

it was clear immediately

that he was going to get quite a lot of help towards his rent

and most of his council tax paid.

I had a harder job persuading Derek that that was the case.

She amazed me. She amazed me.

I had all the documents

and the income and she sat there and within four minutes,

she's sitting there saying "That is what you are entitled to."

I looked. I said, "You're joking?" She said, "No."

"You should have been claiming all the time."

Together, Jill and Derek filled in the relevant forms.

According to her calculations, Derek would receive £58 a week

in housing benefit and £10 a week in council tax benefits.

When a professional fills a form in,

it's different from when you or I do it.

That basically is the gist of it.

A few weeks later, and Derek started to receive his benefits.

Because he was owed so much in back payments,

he was also given a lump sum payout of about £1,000.

Overnight, he swapped anxiety over diminishing savings

for the reassurance of a regular weekly income.

I don't have to choose between going and buy a loaf of bread

or having an hour's heating.

When we found out how much Derek was entitled to,

it wasn't a surprise for us, but it was to Derek

and that's the great thing about this job.

You really get to see the results of your hard work.

The best news of all is that after a lifetime of looking after others,

Derek can now look forward to a peaceful retirement

in a place that he knows well.

This has been our family home since 1957.

I would never leave it.

There is that much history in this house.

These days, Derek is a regular visitor to the Age UK drop-in centre

where he keeps Jill up to date with how he's doing.

'He looks much happier,

'much more confident that he can continue to live his life'

'and enjoy himself. It isn't necessarily with huge, you know,

'expensive things that he's going to buy. It is basic things.

'Derek is genuinely more contented and happy in his whole life.'

If you want any help or advice, Age UK. That's the place to go.

The place to go. It's something which never occurred to me,

I wish to hell it had.

It's thanks to Jill and Age UK

that Derek can look forward to a future

and relax in the knowledge

that there is somebody out there if times get tough.

Back now to the world of the scrounger

where the benefit investigators

of Southend-on-Sea Borough Council are closing in

on suspected fraudster, Memory Mafuta.

For years, Memory had been claiming housing benefit

and council tax benefit, posing as an unemployed single mother.

Thanks to the combined efforts

of benefit investigation officer Paul Broadbent

and visiting officer Grace Grimwade,

it looks like Memory's days of cheating the taxpayer are numbered.

It didn't surprise me to find out that she had lots of money

and she was actually working, drawing a wage,

getting her council tax paid, getting her rent paid.

Basically, she was laughing it up, wasn't she?

After months of hard work and preparation,

Paul Broadbent had amassed a pile of evidence to prove

that, for the past six years, Memory had claimed

over £31,000 worth of benefits that she wasn't entitled to.

Paul now felt ready to hear from the suspect herself.

Memory Mafuta had some explaining to do.

After we collated all the information and held the evidence,

we decided to invite Mrs Mafuta in for a formal interview under caution.

The purpose of the interview was to ask her to explain

the discrepancies in her work, in her capital and savings and her partner.

On 18 December 2009,

Memory Mafuta was called in for an interview under caution.

At the interview, Paul asked Memory why, despite the fact

that she had been claiming benefits since 2003

as an unemployed single mother,

she had, during this time,

been living with the father of her three children.

He also wanted to know why she hadn't declared

that she had in fact been working the whole time

and had substantial undeclared savings in her bank accounts.

When faced with this barrage of questions and accusations,

Memory chose to say nothing.

We asked Mrs Mafuta, at the start of the interview,

if she wished to seek legal advice and she decided to take that offer.

A few weeks later, and Memory was called in again

for a second interview.

This time, she attended with a lawyer.

She refused to answer any of Paul's questions but she did decide

to make a statement of her own.

It was at the second interview

that Mrs Mafuta declared that her partner had moved into her address

and that he had moved in four months previously in September.

This admission of guilt came out of the blue and may have

looked like Memory had seen the error of her ways

and wanted to make a clean breast of it,

but Paul wasn't born yesterday.

I think Mrs Mafuta chose to tell the council at that time

about her partner moving in

because she was aware of the evidence held against her

and she was hoping that we would accept a smaller period

that he had moved in

and hopefully end up with a smaller overpayment of benefit.

We had a discussion with Mrs Mafuta's solicitor and gave him disclosure,

showed him the evidence that we intended to put towards Mrs Mafuta.

Mrs Mafuta decided not to attend any further interviews

and no questions were eventually able to be put to her.

At this point, Paul could have been forgiven for thinking

that was the last time he would hear from Memory

until the case came to court.

He certainly wasn't prepared for what came next.

Shortly after the interview,

an article appeared in the local paper.

The article showed that Mrs Mafuta was a director of a local charity.

Mrs Mafuta was appealing for funds,

donations to support orphans and children in her native Zimbabwe.

The council were already aware of Memory's connection to this charity.

If she had hoped that by drawing attention to it in the press

prior to her court case, the council would ease off on her,

she had another think coming.

I was absolutely furious when I saw that in the paper,

that she was portraying herself as this goodly person.

All the time, she was ripping the British taxpayer off,

left, right and centre.

So she didn't win any brownie points from Grace

but being written up in the local paper as a do-gooder

couldn't have done her any harm. Could it?

The article said that she had been living since 2003

with her husband and children.

Mrs Mafuta told the council

that her partner had moved in in September 2009.

The article seemed to be a public admission that this was not the case

and, actually, her partner had been living there since 2003

with her children.

Oh, dear, oh, dear!

It looks like Memory's attempt to manipulate the press turned out

to be a spectacular own goal.

At this point, you'd expect even the most hardened fraudster

to retire to lick their wounds.

But, oh, no, not Memory.

Her next move amazed even a seasoned investigator like Paul.

In August 2010, fully aware

that she was being investigated for benefit fraud,

she reapplied for more benefits.

I was very surprised

to find that Mrs Mafuta had been claiming benefits again

from the August to October period.

I was even more surprised when I found out she'd been working

and, again, had not told us about that work.

I don't know why Mrs Mafuta didn't tell us.

I don't know if it was, by this stage, she thought

she had nothing else to lose and just kept going,

or whether she thought we wouldn't find out about it.

I really don't know why she didn't declare that.

It certainly didn't seem to be for financial reasons,

judging by the amount of money in their accounts.

News of this latest twist filtered back to Grace

who, needless to say, was less than impressed.

If that's not taking the rise, what is?

It just makes me so cross

because there are people out there who genuinely need help

and they're not going to get it, because all that time and effort

is wasted on people who are just abusing the system.

By this stage, the team had had enough.

For Paul Broadbent, the way forward was clear.

There's significant evidence of undeclared work,

undeclared capital held in undeclared accounts.

There was enough to eliminate housing

and council tax benefit entitlement for the period claimed.

We believe that prosecution

was the right form of action to take against Mrs Mafuta.

On 8th July 2011, Memory Mafuta was summoned to appear

at Basildon Crown Court.

She was charged with ten counts of fraud

under the Social Security Administration Act.

Memory pleaded guilty to nine of these counts.

But even at this late stage, after she had confessed her guilt,

Memory still wasn't going to give up gracefully.

When Mrs Mafuta appeared at court, she said she couldn't speak English.

This was news to us because she had never indicated

that she was not able to speak English or communicate,

have any difficulty communicating with us at all.

Certainly didn't seem to have any problems

speaking to the news reporters or her employers.

We paid for the interpreter at the taxpayers' expense

throughout the court process.

In the end, none of Memory's game-playing made any difference.

The judge found that between October 2003 and January 2010,

she had swindled Southend Council out of £30,612.02

in council tax benefit and housing benefit.

Add that to the £460.73 she claimed between August and October 2010,

and the grand total of ill-gotten gains come to an eye-watering

£31,072.75.

Memory's partner was never interviewed by investigators

or prosecuted for any offence.

Memory was sentenced to nine months in prison, suspended for 12 months

as the judge said he wanted to avoid taxpayers paying out any more money.

He also ordered Memory to repay the 31 grand of benefits,

but not exactly as Paul would have liked.

She was not ordered to pay the money back through the courts

and it's down to the authority

to recoup that money from Mrs Mafuta in the future.

If she were to claim benefits, then we could get that money back from her

by taking it off her ongoing benefit entitlement.

Overall, the team were pleased with the outcome of their investigation.

This case isn't one of the worst that I've ever come across

whilst I've been working here at Southend, but it's in the top ten.

It wasn't someone who was doing a bit of work on the side

and just needed some cash for Christmas, or to pay off a debt,

or something like that, this was a pure case of greed.

Thanks to my referral to the Fraud Office in the first place,

I'm glad that this has gone to court.

I'm glad she's got her comeuppance and I just hope it's a lesson

to anyone else who's thinking of trying to pull the same stunt.

We may not get you today but we will get you, soon or later.

From charity saint to benefit cheat, let's hope Memory

remembers the consequences of her crime for a long time to come.

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