Al-Azawi/Bowley Saints and Scroungers

Saints and Scroungers puts the spotlight on benefit thieves.

Those who ruthlessly steal millions from the British taxpayer.

But, we also search out the saints, the people who help 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.

And, coming up on today's show...

She was given asylum and a council flat,

but this woman fleeced Britain's benefit system

and committed a jaw dropping fraud totalling almost £1 million.

The team and I were absolutely staggered at the audacity of this lady

and the amount of money that she had claimed from the various agencies.

They returned to the UK with nothing.

A single mum's search for a home for herself and her daughter.

My mum and dad were happy that I had come home, back to live in England.

Them not used to having a child running around, it was quite hard.

Every year, around 25,000 people apply for asylum here in the UK.

For those who are successful, the benefit system is there to help them start a new life.

For those who cheat the system, the future is very different.

Meet Mahira Rustam Al-Azawi.

She fled her home country of Iraq and was granted asylum in UK

and given the chance of a safe and stable future.

But investigators suspect she used false identities

to steal thousands from the benefit system, creating a property empire

and putting her son through private school, all at our expense.

Bromley Council is responsible for services across 59 square miles of south-east London.

It's always thought to be an affluent borough.

but there's pockets of real deprivation.

Over 23,000 households are claiming either housing or council tax benefits,

at a cost of over £120 million a year.

Last year, the council's fraud team uncovered £1 million worth of bogus claims.

Mark Gibson is one of their investigators.

In 2007, he received a tip-off about a possible benefit cheat.

One of the ladies who works in the education department

in the students loans, became suspicious

when Mahira Rustam telephoned in in search of a student loan.

Rustam was looking for help for a place at Greenwich University to study civil engineering.

She became quite irate on the phone when she was asked some questions.

This alerted this officer

that there might be something suspicious about the case

and she contacted one of my investigators.

The fraud team thought it was worth checking out.

They ran a search on Mahira Rustam's address in Bromley and made a surprising discovery.

We found there was someone claiming for housing benefit at that property

but it was a slightly different person from the person who was claiming the student loan.

Mahira Rustam Al-Azawi was claiming housing benefit.

The person who was claiming a student loan was Mahira Rustam.

So the names were slightly different

but they were both apparently living at the same address.

The alarm bells were ringing and investigators got to work.

The benefit record showed that Mahira Rustam Al-Azawi

was claiming housing benefit and council tax benefit from Bromley Council.

The investigators contacted the DWP who confirmed they were paying her income support.

They also said that because she suffered from rheumatoid arthritis,

she was claiming disability living allowance and a carer's allowance.

On the benefit claim form,

Mahira Al-Azawi said that she was living with her carer, Sara Sami.

This is noted on the file.

So the team now knew that her carer, Sara Sami and Mahira Rustam Al-Azawi

were apparently living at the same address.

Both women were living on benefits with no declared income.

But what about Mahira Rustam, the student applying for a loan?

It was time to examine her application more closely.

Luis Remedios is deputy chief internal auditor of Bromley Council.

From the form submitted for a student application for a grant,

Mahira Rustam had stated that she was working for a civil engineering company.

So far from relying on the carer and living on benefits,

this Mahira appeared to be a successful career woman and that's not all.

The coincidences were mounting up. A search of companies house revealed that the civil engineering

company's directors as Mahira Al-Azawi and Sara Sami.

Hang on a minute, so Sara Sami, the carer, was actually a company director?

It just didn't add up and investigators were now convinced

that there was only one Mahira and her and Sami were up to something.

We had to individuals who were claiming to be company directors,

who are both claiming housing benefit with no declared income.

It smelled decidedly fishy

and fraud officers noticed something else that was unusual about these benefit claims.

Mahira Al-Azawi had requested the payments be made into Sara Sami's bank account

as she was disabled and couldn't get to the bank.

They made checks and discovered the account was with the Woolwich building society.

The address quoted on that bank account was an address in Glasgow.

The same property had also connections with Al-Azawi's brother.

The team uncovered another family link.

On her claim form for income support, Al-Azawi had declared her son as a dependent

and his birth certificate proved very interesting indeed.

We obtained a birth certificate for Al-Azawi's son and the address shown on the certificate

was the same address as the address registered for Sara Sami, shown on the Woolwich bank account.

It was all pointing to one conclusion.

It seemed more than a coincidence that Al-Azawi

also had her son registered at that address

and her brother was at that addresses.

We suspected that Sami and Al-Azawi were the same person.

We did not know for certain.

If the investigators were right, this benefit fraud could be far bigger than they first thought.

Later, when investigators finally catch up with Al-Azawi,

she doesn't make the situation any clearer.

Will the council's evidence be strong enough to bring her to justice?

Still to come...

He was secretly filmed walking his dog, pushing a trolley,

even mowing the lawn, but this benefit thief claimed

he was so disabled he couldn't even dress himself.

Mr Rose told us he had chronic back pain and arthritis in both knees.

He couldn't put his clothes on

and he needed assistance going to the toilet.

That how he told us it affected his day-to-day living.

It's farewell to the fraudsters and hello to the people we call saints,

those who are in genuine need of help, but are too proud,

or don't know how to claim what is rightfully theirs.

And, the people who point them in the right direction.

Becoming a professional dancer, and travelling the world, would be a dream come true for some people

but what would you do if that fairytale life suddenly ended

and you had to return to the UK with absolutely nothing?

Dee Bowley couldn't believe her luck when at just 19-years-old

she was offered a dancing job in Portugal.

I was excited because getting away from England,

going to different countries to travel

and it was like cabaret work with four or five other English girls.

When she split up with her long-term Portuguese boyfriend,

she had to return to the UK with her six-year-old daughter.

It was not an easy decision for this young mother to make.

After ten years of living in Portugal,

it was quite difficult to decide what to do. Shall I go, shall I stay?

Try and work on the relationship.

In the end, Dee made the hard choice of returning to the UK

and giving up the life she had known for a decade.

With not much money in her pocket, moving back into her parents house was her only option.

Despite being grateful, this was a big change in Dee's life.

I've lived my own from the age of 18.

Actually moving back in with your parents

and having your own ways and they having their ways, it was quite hard.

Dee was desperate to find a home of her own.

But, with no job and no money, it was easier said than done.

When I first came back, not having money coming in,

it was a bit of a struggle.

My parents helped me as much as they could

but they couldn't financially help me all the time.

This was not the life Dee had imagined for herself and her daughter.

She was used to supporting herself independently as a professional dancer,

a career she had set her sights on as a young girl.

She first began dancing when she was just three-years-old.

By five, already I was taking ballet exams, tap exams, doing shows,

competitions and basically just carried on from a one day a week,

to every day of the week.

When I started to get older, ten,

when I started to use the pointe shoes and wear the tutus,

that's when I realised it was what I wanted to do as a career.

I did my first ever main production when I was 11

and that was in Birmingham, the opera, Aida.

As a teenager, Dee attended a performing arts college

and in her final year, she jumped at the chance to tour Portugal as a dancer.

I thought Portugal will be a good place to start off with

and then see if I could go further.

Dee's family had mixed feelings about her going abroad at such a young age.

We were very happy that she was following that dream.

Also, very sad that she was leaving and, being female,

we were worried about her being in a foreign country miles away from her mum and dad.

One year later, 20-year-old Dee told them she had fallen in love with a Portuguese man.

She decided that she wanted to make a life out there.

She had met somebody who she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.

Dee's boyfriend had three children from a previous relationship

and they decided they wanted a baby.

We were together for probably nearly three years when we decided

to plan to have a family, which happened more or less straight away.

Then, I had a beautiful little girl called Keyshia.

Obviously, our first grandchild, there was a lot of excitement and happiness.

We used to try and go over to see Dee and Keyshia

as often as we possibly could, around about four times year,

Christmas, her birthday, relevant points in time for Keyshia.

It was very difficult to communicate with Keyshia at first

because her first language was Portuguese.

Only seen her for a number of times a year, for week at a time,

meant that she had to get used to us again.

That was difficult, as well, having to leave after we've just made contact again.

But, they were both happy, we were happy for them.

Dee now had a family of her own.

She hung up her dancing shoes and started working in her boyfriend's family's cafe.

Dee was happy in her new job and her daughter

settled in well at school, speaking both Portuguese and English.

But while daughter, Keyshia, was enjoying life in Portugal,

things were going badly wrong for her mum and dad.

The relationship broke down and they decided to split up.

Hundreds of miles from her family and friends,

Dee now faced the life changing decision,

not just for herself, but for her six-year-old daughter, as well.

It was very, very hard because also changing Keyshia's life around,

taking her away from her friends.

It was a big decision that she had to make,

which she wanted her parents, her mum and dad to be part of.

Obviously, trying to do this over the telephone

was very, very difficult and fraught with problems.

There was tears and there was arguments as to which was the right way to go.

Because I was working with the family business, it was a bit awkward because I lived with him as well.

I had nowhere to stay.

In May 2010, Dee and Keyshia arrived in England with nothing but their suitcases to make a new start.

Dee's first step towards building a new life for herself

and her daughter was to try and get some money together.

I went to the job centre and applied for income support.

But having not lived in the country for ten years, Dee was told

she would not be entitled to any benefit for 12 weeks.

I did actually take a loan out with the job centre

which was paid back automatically as soon as I got money coming in.

It was a bit stressful not having money coming in weekly, monthly.

Having always having a job since the age of 18, Dee was keen to get back

to work as soon as possible, taking every opportunity she was offered.

She signed up for a course through the job centre to brush up on her skills.

It was just a 15-week course of English and maths,

just to get my brain back into gear of the things we need when starting to look for a job.

I made quite a few friends, doing the course, as well, it made me feel more confident

and getting back into a normal, social life which I needed to do.

Her new life was beginning to come together and to Dee's relief,

England was starting to feel like home for her daughter, too.

Keyshia picked up the English language really quickly.

After one month of being back in England, she went straight to school,

which I thought would encourage her to speak more English and make her feel confident with the language.

Dee now faced her biggest challenge, finding a home of her own.

Dee arranged a meeting with the housing officer from the council

and she was relieved when they told her she was eligible for a flat.

But, along with other people, entitled to homes,

Dee was told she had to check what properties were available week by week on a website and bid for them.

One of the organisations advertising was Nexus Housing Association.

It has 2,800 flats and houses across Worcestershire for people

on low incomes who can't afford to rent privately.

Nexus were set up in the late 1970s as an independent,

not-for-profit housing association.

We receive grants from the government

towards our new build properties, but in terms of our general

day-to-day running costs, it's from the renting income that we receive.

We try to keep the rents as affordable as possible.

We advertise our properties through a choice based lettings system,

along with other housing associations and councils in Worcestershire.

People can bid each week as long as they are eligible.

We work through who's bid for those properties and they are awarded in line with priority.

As a single mother needing a flat, and wanting to get back out into the world of work,

Dee was considered a priority client.

But, the road back to financial independence for Dee was going to be a rocky one

Luckily, Nexus had a saint working in their wings who is going to give Dee and her daughter

the helping hand they desperately needed.

Helping customers like Dee is very rewarding.

It just gives you that satisfaction

seeing tenants being able to make a life for themselves.

But first, we revisit the devious world of the scrounger

and here's a message to all those benefit thieves out there. Smile, you're on camera.

I enjoy a good, long walk in the countryside as much as the next man.

Plenty of fresh air and exercise, especially with me four-legged friend by my side.

I'm not sure I'd keep up with this bloke.

He's what you call a serious walker.

He's covered a lot of ground.

It's a bit surprising, then, that David Rose claimed he had such serious disabilities

that he needed round-the-clock care.

Mr Rose told us that he had chronic back pain

and arthritis in both knees.

The way that affected him, as he told us,

was he had trouble getting dressed in the mornings.

He couldn't put his clothes on.

He needed assistance with his bodily functions, like going to the toilet.

That's how he told as it affected his day-to-day living.

Because of the severe problems David described,

he was awarded disability living allowance at the highest rate for mobility and a medium rate for care.

Disability living allowance is to help the more vulnerable people in society

to get the assistance they require.

People may need help getting out to the shops, paying bills.

Perhaps giving them a car or a taxi.

But then the national benefit fraud hotline received an anonymous call

claiming Rose wasn't as disabled as he had said.

That tip-off told us that Mr Rose was walking his dog,

doing things that were not consistent with his claim

for disability living allowance, where he told us

that he was a severely disabled person.

The fraud investigators decided it was time to get the camera out

and gather some evidence on this suspected scrounger.

Following the tip-off, it took about six months to gather all the evidence we needed.

It was no good following Mr Rose on one day,

we wanted to see him over a period to see if there was a pattern.

Did he have good days, bad days.

As far as the surveillance was concerned, we only every saw him

doing things which suggested he was perfectly well.

Mr Rose was telling us he had considerable difficulties

getting around. He also claimed to need somebody with him

to take care of his bodily functions throughout the day.

We saw no evidence of that whatsoever.

This cheat didn't stop at dog walking.

He was filmed pushing his packed trolley around the supermarket,

unloading heavy boxes from his car and even mowing the lawn.

We asked our physio if she could see any sign

of Rose's so-called chronic pain.

I'm watching some footage of David Rose going for a walk with his dog.

Erm...

He's holding the stick in his hand and not using it.

If someone needs 24 hour care, the other important point is

if they need 24 hour care, they can't go out on their own

and are generally housebound.

He's looking very physically well and walking on uneven surface

and up the hill.

Quite a long distance. He's in front of the dog.

He just holding his stick.

It looks like a stick that is not a proper walking aid,

it's more of a sporty stick that people would use for walking

to give them a mild bit of support.

You see a lot of hill walkers using them.

He's covering quite a lot of distance,

three or 400 yards in a minute.

His mowing his own lawns, physically strenuous

and he's doing it very easily.

To be in the pain that he says he's in,

to the point where he can do nothing for himself, it's absolute nonsense.

He wouldn't be able to use that hover mower.

With their damning surveillance footage in the back,

the investigators then made another jaw dropping discovery.

David Rose was a regular down at the gym.

Mr Rose had been a member of the gym for some years.

He was actually using the treadmill for 20 minutes a day,

which again was totally inconsistent with what he had told us

when he first claimed his benefits.

To find somebody who perhaps we may have seen on a good day

walking his dog, we may have seen him on a good day cutting his grass,

we may have seen him on a good day, unloading his car.

Somebody who is a member of a gym and uses it on a daily basis,

that was crucial.

After a six-month investigation,

the team now thought they had a benefit thief on their hands.

It was time to confront him with their evidence.

We sent Mr Rose an invitation to come in for an interview under caution, which he attended.

Initially, we were talking about his claim and he actually told us

his condition had got worse.

When he was presented with the video evidence

and was told about the surveillance, he then confirmed that

his condition had improved and he eventually told us

he was experiencing financial difficulties

and that's why he committed the fraud.

Between 2007 and 2010,

David Rose had stolen £10,158.75 from the British taxpayer.

He appeared at Ipswich magistrates Court,

where he was sentenced to a supervised 18-month community order

and was ordered to pay back all the money he had pocketed.

That's one scrounger who quite literally walked himself into trouble.

Coming up... As the evidence against Al-Azawi mounts up,

the sheer scale of her fraud is revealed.

One of the bank accounts, showed direct debits going through a private school.

-For her son?

-That's correct.

My taxes and your taxes are paying for her son's private education?

That's right, yes.

But, first, it's back to our saints.

Dee Bowley moved to Portugal in her teens to pursue her career as a dancer.

She ended up staying and starting a family.

Sadly, after ten years she split up with her boyfriend

and had to return to the UK with daughter, Keyshia.

Her only option was to move back in with her parents.

With no job and no money, making a fresh start was tough

but Dee had always been an independent and hard-working person.

She enrolled on a college course to help her find work.

It was just a 15-week course of English and maths,

just to get my brain back into gear of the things we need

when we're starting to look for a job.

Dee was desperate to get out from under her parents feet,

get a job and get a place to live for herself and her daughter.

I've lived on my own from, like, the age of 18, so moving back in

with your parents and having your own ways and they having their ways,

it was quite hard.

Dee was receiving income support during this turbulent time

and also being told by the council she was eligible for a flat.

But, along with others, she would have two bid each week for properties on a website.

One organisation advertising homes for rent was Nexus Housing Association.

People can bid each week, as long as they are eligible.

We work through who's bid for those properties

and they're awarded in line with priority.

As a single mother, who had lost her home,

Dee was considered an urgent case.

And, after four months, Nexus had some fantastic news for her.

While on the college course I did actually get a phone call

saying there was a flat available if wanted.

I said, "yes" straightaway!

I didn't mind about the area or anything because I just needed to get my own place.

Dee and her daughter were delighted with their new home.

We got the flat, which was really good.

We were excited because we were getting our own place.

Once she found out that she had somewhere to live,

it didn't matter where it was, what it was, it was a roof over her head.

Her own space which she could go and then do what she wanted to do

and wasn't being constantly watched by her mum and dad.

Yes, she was very, very happy.

With a weekly income support and housing and council tax benefit in place,

Dee found she could get by.

We were always there to try and help if we could

but our resources were limited at the time

and it was good to know that she was getting the backup with the benefits.

As part of her course, Dee had been volunteering at a nursery

and, when it ended, she got a lovely surprise.

I got offered a job which was working as a kitchen assistant in a nursery,

which I took straightaway.

She was over the moon.

In just a few months of being proactive and getting the right benefits,

Dee had sorted out her finances,

settled her daughter into a school and found a new home.

Her job was the icing on the cake.

Then she got some worrying news.

When Keyshia turned seven, my income support stopped

and also because I was offered the job, which was going to start more or less straight away,

they didn't put me on jobseekers, which meant my housing benefits was also going to be stopped.

With five weeks before her first pay packet and no benefits to rely on,

Dee had no idea how she would pay her rent.

All the effort she had put in for months,

and it looked like her life was about to collapse once again.

I started to panic. The possibility of losing my home

after I'd just got it was very stressful.

Being kicked out because of not being able to pay rent.

Luckily, help was at hand.

Dee's landlords, Nexus, employ saints like Gerty Walker.

She is a financial advice officer who help tenants like Dee who are facing serious money worries.

Most of the customers that I have to deal with

are vulnerable tenants with low-income,

experiencing difficulties in maintaining their tenancies.

Mostly, this is observed through their inability to maintain

payments on the rent account.

We try to help as many people as we possibly can.

However, not everybody is entitled to the help that's out there.

The cases Gerty takes on are many and varied.

67-year-old tenant, Mrs Shuck, turned to Gerty for help

when she was struggling to make ends meet.

Because of having the illness I've got, I needed a carer.

I didn't know how to pay for it.

I was paying out of my own pension, which was leaving me short of money.

I paid all my household bills, rent, poll tax,

everything and when it came to food, I'd got about £10 a week to live on.

Suffering from a whole host of illnesses, including asthma, lung disease and emphysema,

Mrs Shuck knew she couldn't cope without help.

She came and went all through the forms took her four hours

because she went through everything. Never missed a thing.

She's the only lady who really took the time and the trouble

to go through it properly.

I can't get my breath, so therefore I can't do the housework.

I have a job in walking when I go out, I have to keep stopping.

I'm apt to fall down,

so, therefore I have to have a carer to do these jobs for me.

Mrs Shuck has made several attempts to get some disability benefits,

but has failed due to, probably,

not being able to complete the forms correctly.

We went through Mrs Shuck's circumstances

because it's not the illness itself

that qualifies you to disability benefits

but the impact that it has on your day-to-day activities.

Mrs Shuck only had to wait a few weeks for a decision.

When the letter came through to say to say they accepted me

I was over the moon.

And I rung and thanked Gerty very much for helping me.

Mrs Shuck had been awarded the top rate of attendance allowance

for people who are over 65 with health problems who need care.

But that wasn't all.

The fact that Mrs Shuck is entitled to attendance allowance

means that now she is entitled to full housing benefits

and full council tax, which in turn means that she hasn't got to worry

about where the money will come for her to cover her rent.

I've worked hard all my life.

I've paid my taxes

and it's just nice to know, now,

that there is something out there to help me.

It's just lifted a big load off my mind because I can manage now.

Gerty was used to working wonders,

but would she be able to solve Dee's financial crisis

and lift the threat hanging over her new home?

When I first met Dee, although she had secured herself a job,

she was concerned that there was going to be a clear gap

between when her income support stopped

and when she was going to get her first pay.

When a child turns seven,

the government encourages parents claiming income support

to start actively looking for employment.

As a result of that, the income support stops

and they have to start claiming jobseeker's allowance.

Dee advised me that she'd received a letter from the job centre

advising her she was not entitled to her jobseeker's allowance

from when her income support stopped

to when she was due to start employment.

I didn't know anything, like what I was entitled to,

what help I could get because of not living in the country for so long.

So, thankfully, Gerty was there to help me,

explain to me what help I could get and she actually helped me

figure everything out and understand the paperwork.

Gerty told Dee they should appeal against the decision.

I had the right to be on that until I started my job,

so that was the first thing she decided to do,

was to get in touch with them and sort that out for me.

And Gerty was right.

Dee won her appeal for jobseeker's allowance to be paid

until she started work.

Not only that, but as she had now been claiming benefits

for more than six months, she was entitled to extra help.

Once we found out that Dee was entitled to jobseeker's allowance,

that meant that she was entitled to transitional benefits

such as transitional housing benefits,

extended council tax benefits, which ensured that the transition

from her being reliant on benefits to her starting employment

ran as smoothly as it possibly could for her.

Dee now knew her rent would be paid and her new home was secure.

And Gerty had another surprise for her.

She qualified for a one-off job grant, designed to help bridge

the gap between starting a job and getting paid.

The grant was £250 which helped out an awful lot with, like,

shopping, paying bills, every-day life things that we need.

Things went so well at the nursery that after eight months

Dee was offered a full-time job.

She's now proud to be paying her own rent and council tax

and supporting her daughter herself.

Helping customers like Dee is very rewarding.

It just gives you that satisfaction, you know,

seeing tenants being able to make a life for themselves.

It just demonstrates that there is help out there that would enable you

to move away from being reliant on benefits to being independent.

Without Gerty's help, I don't know where I'd be.

She helped me an awful lot to understand

about benefits and everything.

She really, really did help me. And thanks to her, I'm sorted out now.

I've got more friends in England than Portugal,

and Mummy likes her job.

We have our own place and it's nice

because I have my own room.

I'm happy, Keysia's happy,

life's going the way I want it to go at the moment.

It can't have been easy for Dee, building a whole new life

from scratch, but I think she should be proud of what she's achieved.

And, thanks to Gerty's help,

the future is looking rosy for her and her daughter.

Now it's back to the world of the scroungers,

and Bromley Council's fraud team were trailing a woman they believe

was using different identities to cheat the benefits system.

Iraqi refugee Mahira Rustam had applied for a grant to study

at Greenwich University, claiming she was a civil engineer.

But council records revealed a woman with a very similar name

was living on benefits at the same address in Bromley

with her carer, Sara Sami.

So, basically, we had two identities.

One was Mahira Rustam, who was a student

studying at Greenwich University. There was also a businesswoman,

a Mahira Rustam Al-Azawi claiming benefits

being looked after by carers.

Investigators believed that these two Mahiras

were actually the same woman.

What's more, when they ran a search on Rustam's employer,

they made another interesting discovery.

Both she and Sara Sami were listed as company directors.

They were directors of a company when they claimed to have no income.

We had our suspicions that Mahira and Sami

were actually claiming benefits falsely.

But when the investigators checks

revealed that Sara Sami's bank account

and the birth certificate of Al-Azawi's son

were both registered to her brother's address in Glasgow,

the case took a new turn.

The evidence suggested to us, at this point in the investigation,

that Al-Azawi and Sami

were one and the same person.

The fraud team had a massive job on their hands

to gather the proof needed to bring this suspected cheat to justice.

I've come to Bromley to find out more

from investigator Louis Remedios.

This part of our investigation, we looked through the bank accounts

and one of the bank accounts showed direct debits

going to a private school.

-For her son?

-That's correct.

So my taxes and your taxes are paying

for her son's private education?

-That's right, yes.

-Did you check that out at the school?

We did and our investigation showed that the application

for the school place was in the name of Sara Sami

but the boy's name was put down as Al-Azawi

which confirmed our suspicions that Al-Azawi and Sara Sami

were the same person.

Convinced that they were dealing with

a sophisticated con woman using multiple identities,

the council now began examining Mahina Al-Azawi's history in detail.

They discovered that she arrived from Iraq as an asylum seeker.

She was housed in this flat by Lambeth Council

and began claiming benefits in 1992.

Nothing odd about that, but then a search with the land registry

revealed that Al-Azawi, apparently living on state hand-outs,

had bought not one, but three properties.

Louis, can you tell me about Al-Azawi's properties?

Well, Al-Azawi had three properties

from what we were able to establish in the investigation.

The first property was bought under the name of Mahar Rustam,

against which benefits was claimed in the name of Al-Azawi.

So, Al-Azawi had used an alias to buy this house

while claiming benefits at the address in her own name.

The second property is in the London Borough of Lambeth

which we believe was bought under right-to-buy.

That was bought in her own name and the tenant there was Sara Sami.

So this time, she bought the house in her own name

but used the alias Sara Sami,

the same one she claimed was her carer, to claim benefits.

And the third property,

the tenants there were in the name of Sara Sami and Al-Azawi.

So have we got a situation here with Al-Azawi,

who effectively is the landlord,

but also claiming benefits using false identities,

so you actually got a landlord-and-tenant situation,

-but it's the same person.

-That's correct.

Among the properties she owned but had put in different names,

what was their status? What was happening?

Did she have tenants or were they empty,

or was she doing it for capital growth, what?

No, she had tenants in there. One of the properties,

she had rented out to her own relatives,

her mother and her brother was living in one of the properties.

None of the tenants of any of these properties

was guilty of wrongdoing, but Mahira Al-Azawi was coining it in.

She took out three mortgages.

One mortgage was in her own name, the right-to-buy property in Lambeth.

The other two mortgages were under false names.

The two mortgages concerned totalled in the region of £800,000.

-This is a greedy lady, isn't it?

-Certainly was.

The mortgage fraud was investigated by the police,

we concentrated on the benefit fraud.

On the 29th of May, 2008,

the investigators finally had all the evidence they needed.

And Mahira Al-Azawi was arrested at her home.

The house behind me was searched and we found evidence

of a sophisticated fraud that had taken place.

There was an Irish passport in the name of Sara Sami

with the photo of Al-Azawi in it.

It was the concrete proof of what they suspected.

Al-Azawi's carer, Sara Sami, didn't exist.

Sara Sami and Al-Azawi were the same person

and therefore the carer's claim was false.

Over three years, Mahira Al-Azawi had claimed £14,000

to pay for a fictitious carer

and had simply pocketed the money herself.

Al-Azawi's neighbours thought that she was

a successful business woman,

and hence her wealth and living in a nice area like this.

And ultimately, this lifestyle was being provided

at the tax-payer's expense.

Al-Azawi was interviewed under caution

at Bromley police station that afternoon.

She continued to give no comment answers

to all the questions put to her, but investigators were confident

they already had enough damning evidence

against Mahira Al-Azawi to prosecute her.

In June, 2010, she appeared in Croydon Crown Court.

Al-Azawi was charged with 13 offences of fraud.

She pleaded guilty to six charges relating to herself

and not guilty to the other seven relating to Sara Sami.

She was convicted of all 13 charges.

Over a period of nine years, Al-Azawi had stolen...

She was sentenced to three years in prison.

No other members of her family were charged with any offences.

The team and I were absolutely staggered

at the audacity of this lady and the amount of money

that she had claimed from the various agencies.

In Bromley, this case was one of the largest we'd ever encountered.

The instincts of the initial investigator were spot on

and without her alertness this fraud may not have come to light.

The welfare system is there to act as a safety net

for those in genuine need.

Just as in private sector insurance fraud, it's not a victimless crime.

We all end up paying for this.

Mahira Al-Azawi stole almost £200,000 from the British tax-payer

and obtained £800,000 by fraudulently applying for mortgages

using false names.

But she's not got away with it.

Fraud investigators tracked her down and sent her down,

and she's got to pay back the money she stole from our pockets.

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