Kamara/Carlson Saints and Scroungers

This programme tracks down thieves. It exposes fraudsters and it brings help to those who really deserve it.

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

This is Saints And Scroungers.

Saints And Scroungers

is about busting benefit thieves who steal millions every year,

and crack teams of investigators determined to scupper their scams.

And 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.

On today's programme...

this cheating couple illegally claimed benefits,

then used taxpayer's cash to set up a business.

We found a goat farm, a fish farm.

There was also a house and there was a farm shop.

And we meet the parents of baby William,

whose severe disabilities have left him facing an uncertain future.

We don't know what time we have,

could be a few months, or a few more years,

but we want to make the most of it,

so the idea of him in childcare without us, isn't an option.

Could a charity help solve their money worries,

while they devote themselves to caring for their son?

Sometimes, crimes can go undetected for years

and the perpetrators almost get away with it.

But then, something happens that blows their cover

and all their dirty deeds go up in smoke.

Made Hassan Kamara from Belgium and Leila Raymond from Holland.

They came to London to start a new life together

and were expecting their first child.

As European Union citizens they were entitled to benefits,

and they put in a claim for housing benefit

and council tax benefit, to help make ends meet. Sounds fair enough,

but it seems this couple might not be as innocent as they appear.

In fact, Croydon Council believe they conned

the British taxpayer out of £82,000.

Investigator Gail Campbell was in charge of the case.

They came to the Council in 2001

and claimed housing and Council Tax benefit from that date.

Leila Raymond had no income

and Hassan Kamara declared that he was a taxi driver

working locally for a taxi company.

Their daughter was born

roughly six months after the initial claim was made.

So a young couple at the start of a new life together in the UK.

A little baby girl and a flat in a nice little area,

plus a boost from the government to help them along their way.

Things are looking quite rosy for Hassan and Leila.

And life continued to go well for the couple.

They lived in their flat claiming housing benefit

and Council Tax benefit for the next nine years.

But then, out of the blue, disaster struck,

and their private lives suddenly came under scrutiny.

I've come to Croydon to get the low-down on what

would turn out to be a shocking story.

Gail, to be honest, they look a lovely couple. What went wrong?

Around a year ago, the building behind us caught fire,

and everybody had to move out. The people that were in the top flat

declared themselves homeless

and needed to be put into some temporary accommodation.

So, up to that point everything was OK, all hunky-dory.

Yeah, it seemed to be fine.

When interviewed, they gave their names

as Hadiza Mohammed, the female,

and Nura Kamara was her partner.

They had told the housing officer

that they'd never claimed any benefit before.

What did you discover?

The officer that did the interview made some background checks.

On the database, yeah?

The information held showed there was housing benefit,

it was still being paid the day she checked, no cancellation to it,

and the people who were claiming the benefit

were a female called Leila Raymond

and her partner Hassan Kamara.

So all of a sudden, you've four completely different names?

We've got four names, all supposedly living at the same address.

What we also noticed was that the family,

being interviewed as homeless,

had a child and the people who were living at the address

and claiming the benefit also had a child,

and the child was exactly the same name and date of birth.

What are you starting to suspect at this point?

We're starting to suspect

that Leila Raymond and Hassan Kamara

are the same people as Hadiza Mohammed and Nura Kamara.

So you think there's just one couple here?

Yes. There's just one couple using a false identity

to claim benefits.

So Gail smelt a rat, and if this was fraud,

it had been going on for nearly a decade.

I ran checks on the address in Croydon,

and found there was a claim that was live

in the name of Hassan Kamara and Leila Raymond.

Finding there was no national insurance for Leila Raymond

was very suspicious because everybody needs a national insurance number.

Gill discovered that in 2004, a housing officer

went to the couple's flat to check details of their benefits.

Hassan Kamara was at the property and he opened the door,

and for identification purposes he showed his driving licence.

He also told the visiting officer that Leila Raymond had moved

and he had moved Hadiza Mohammed into the property.

This is all starting to get a little bit confusing.

Hassan Kamara is living here with Leila Raymond,

but then she moves out and Hadiza Mohammed moves in,

but then Hadiza Mohammed, it seems, is living with Nura Kamara.

I mean, who's fake and who's real, here?

Is anyone who they say they are?

Suspecting false identities are being used to dupe the Council

out of thousands in benefits,

Gail asked the UK Border Agency for help.

Part of the Home Office, it controls immigration

and holds information on everyone who enters the UK.

Tina Lyonette is one of their fraud investigators.

We look at all aspects of criminal activity,

that's either within the country,

or people coming into the country using false documents,

types of fraud they might be doing while they're here,

using false documents, false passports,

birth certificates, anything like that,

in order to work and live and remain in the UK.

Tina ran checks on the names of the two couples

supposedly living at the Croydon flat.

I checked all four names, there was no trace

of Leila Raymond or Hassan Kamara,

but because they're Europeans, supposed to be,

there wouldn't necessarily be any trace,

but I did find Hadiza Mohammed and Nura Ismael Kamara.

Tina discovered that Nura Kamara and Hadiza Mohammed

were both Nigerian. They were real people, all right,

but, unlike the so called European couple living at the same flat,

they were not entitled to claim benefit in the UK,

or stay in the country without a visa.

I requested the file for Nura Kamara and found

that he'd married a French national in 2003,

a lady by the name of Helene Vingadio.

So, while Nura is living with Hadiza Mohammed and their baby daughter,

he married a French woman, Helene Vingadio

and then as the husband of an EU national,

he applied for a Residents Permit to remain in the UK.

What we needed to find out was whether

Helene Vingadio was actually in the UK, whether she'd been working

and whether in fact she was living with Mr Kamara.

So, Hassan and Leila,

the sweet couple with the little baby, may not actually exist.

The net is closing in on benefit cheats Nura and Hadiza and

on top of that, it turns out that Nura has also got a French wife.

This plot is really starting to thicken.

As the evidence against them mounts up,

it looks like this dodgy duo are about to come unstuck.

Nura Kamara would have us believe he's living with his girlfriend,

his wife and their kid, all under the same roof.

Yeah, a big happy family.

Next, it's farewell to the 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.

Getting ready for the birth of your first child has got to be

one of the happiest times of your life.

What happens if you find out your baby is going

to be seriously disabled?

How can you prepare for a new arrival that is going to

turn your world upside-down?

We were told that the baby would have very severe development delay and

would have very severe epilepsy that would be very difficult to control.

Basically, his brain just hadn't developed properly

from about 14 weeks.

At the time of all these things being mentioned,

we hadn't a clue what they meant.

With a lot of research on the internet,

we were able to look up different things.

We were told and read lots of things that he probably wouldn't

have much of a lifespan, maybe last one or two years.

Just from the things we'd read, but no-one really could tell us a definitive answer.

When Baby William was born with severe disabilities

that meant he may not live beyond 2,

his parents Helen and Steve knew that they were going to need help.

But they had no idea where to turn.

It was massive change to their lives.

William's main problems are that he has severe fits

and he can't feed normally so he has everything fed through his tube.

He was also a very floppy baby.

At ten and a half months he still doesn't have any head control.

We're not sure whether he'll ever develop that.

Coping with the full-time level of care William was going to need,

Helen knew that returning to work,

even part-time as they had planned, just wasn't an option.

There was no-one else that could physically care for William

for all them hours. No-one else can feed him,

they don't know how his pump works.

No-one else would be able to spot his seizures like I can.

But with their whole focus now on caring for William,

Steve and Helen would also have to live on just one salary.

Once we realised that Helen wouldn't be going back to work,

obviously our income was going to be going down by quite a few

thousand pounds so we had to work out what we were going to do

with that and some of that came from tightening our belts.

Not spending so much on holidays and things like that.

Still, we needed to find other income from somewhere.

But when a doctor put Helen in touch with Contact A Family,

a charity that helps parents of disabled children,

their local family support worker, Dawn, paid her a visit.

-Hello.

-Hi. Come on in.

-Thank you.

Helen first contacted me - I think William was probably

a couple of months old and just had been told by her consultant that

it was worth her giving us a call to see what was available to her.

Before I spoke to Dawn, I knew a bit about disability benefits

that were available but not a lot at all because I never really

had any contact with that sort of thing before and often things like

that are means-tested so I didn't know if we'd be entitled to anything.

I didn't really know how much it would be or if we'd get any of it.

Dawn explained that she thought William would qualify

for disability living allowance.

A lot of our families don't realise that DLA is available to them.

They're often not aware they're entitled to it or the channels they should go down.

Dawn guided Helen through the benefits paperwork step by step.

It's a really long form, 50 pages,

so there's a lot of information required. It's very daunting.

She'd obviously filled in quite a lot before helping other families

so she knew what level of information they needed and just helped me

go through it all so I felt confident I'd given them the right information.

Helen and Steve sent off a form and crossed their fingers

but they didn't have to wait long.

A few weeks later we got a letter back to say

William was entitled to the higher rate level

which we were really pleased about.

It has meant an extra £73.60 a week for the family.

That extra income from the DLA

has lifted a bit of the weight off our shoulders.

A lot of things that William needs particularly are sensory toys.

Just the fact they are sensory toys, the price is increased,

so being able to buy him things like that is great.

Now that Helen's maternity pay is finished,

Dawn has helped her apply for a carer's allowance.

If she's successful,

it will add an extra £50 a week to the family's budget.

Looking to the future,

they're planning what equipment William will need as he gets older.

I'm working with Helen and Steve at the moment to look

for grant provisions for William to have a pushchair

that adapts to the chair that they're able to use in the house.

We're obviously worried about having enough money to pay the bills

and to buy the things William needed,

but since we met Dawn and she's told us about different

things we might be entitled to, it takes a lot of worry away.

Because we know there are things in place to help us,

just with the day-to-day things

and we can just focus on enjoying spending time with William.

I can't begin to imagine what it's been like for Steve and Helen

with little baby William and just how hard that has been for them.

Isn't it great to know there are people out there supporting them

and money available to make life just that little bit easier?

Now it's back to the world of the scroungers

and were this couple suspected of fooling the system for years about to be found out?

When their flat was destroyed in a fire, Nigerians Nura Kamara

and Hadiza Mohammed came to Croydon Council for help, but investigators

uncovered what they believed to be an £82,000 benefit fraud.

The couple are suspected of creating fake European identities

to falsely claim housing benefit and council tax benefit for nine years.

But when they discovered that Nura Kamara had also married

a French woman and applied for UK residence,

the case began to look far bigger than first imagined.

So, Gail, you found out from the Home Office that as well as living

with Hadiza Mohammed, Nura Kamara was actually married

to a French woman, is that right?

That's right, yeah. The information held by the Home Office said that

she came in in December 2002.

And the marriage took place on 9th January, 2003.

Bit of a whirlwind romance, wasn't it?

One month later and they got married?

Bit of love at first sight, I would say.

Nura Kamara would have us believe he's living with his girlfriend,

his wife and their kid, all under the same roof.

Yeah, a big happy family.

Either Nura's got a very understanding girlfriend

or something very fishy's going on.

Tina Lyonette, fraud investigator at the UK border agency,

was on the case.

One of the ways a Nigerian national might remain in the UK is

if they marry a European national

who is exercising their treaty rights.

Treaty rights meaning they have to be living and working in the UK.

She began to look into the history of Nura and Helene's case

to see if it stacked up.

In 2003, there was an application to the Home Office from both Helene

and Nura to apply for residence permits on the basis

of their marriage which had happened the month before.

Helene was allegedly working for a shop in South Norwood

so she appeared to be exercising her treaty rights

and on that basis, the residence permits were issued.

Because the initial application for the permit would only be

issued for a year on the basis that Helene's contract of employment

was short-term, they re-applied again a year later, both of them.

This time Helene said that her contract of employment was permanent

and they were now issued residence permits for five years,

taking it up to 2009.

Tina was suspicious that all was not what it seemed

with Mr and Mrs Kamara.

When I looked at Helene Vingadio, I found that there was

absolutely nothing on record to show that she'd been living in the UK.

There was nothing to show that she'd ever lived at the address.

Where she'd allegedly been working, there was nothing.

The shop had disappeared,

there was no National Insurance contributions and

she'd never even applied for a National Insurance number.

Had she been working legally in the UK,

there would have to be some record.

The council's records raised more questions about

whether this marriage was genuine.

Shortly after he received leave to remain for five years,

one of the Croydon Council visiting officers visited the property

to update the housing and the council tax benefit records.

The visiting officer found Hassan Kamara, another woman named

Hadiza Mohammed and there was no mention of Helene Vingadio.

So, where was Nura's French wife?

It seemed she had vanished into thin air.

At this point we were beginning to think she might be a real person

because we'd seen a copy of her passport

but she didn't live in the UK. In fact, had probably come in,

got married and disappeared straight after.

I also noticed that the signature on Helene's French passport

didn't appear to match the signature on the Home Office application.

That made me think that perhaps someone had completed it

on her behalf.

So not only is Kamara a suspected benefit fraudster,

but he may also be guilty of immigration offences.

It's time for the UK Border Agency to do some serious digging.

Nura Kamara had leave to remain until 2009

but he obviously wanted to make his stay permanent.

He sought advice from solicitors and looked at

the immigration rules in order to find ways in which he could remain.

But things were getting tricky for Kamara.

He had told the Home Office he was married to Helene

but he now wanted to get permanent residency not only for himself,

but for his long-term partner Hadiza and their daughter.

It seemed to be that both had a plan when they first arrived

in the UK that he would go down the route of marrying a European

national in order to gain residence, and once he'd gained permanent

residence he could then apply for Hadiza to be his legal partner.

As long as he was married to Helene, he couldn't have applied

for residency for Hadiza, who was his real partner,

because he couldn't be in a subsisting relationship with both.

He came up with an idea that maybe he could say Hadiza

was his sister-in-law

and that the little girl was his niece rather than his daughter,

but in fact, that was his real partner and his daughter.

His solicitor advised him they would not be granted UK residency

but undeterred, this scrounger came up with another idea.

In 2009, he divorced his wife, Helene Vingadio.

He claimed that they'd been separated quite a long time

and that in 2006, he'd come home and found her in bed with another man.

That was the petition for his divorce, which was obviously granted.

Still pocketing housing benefit and council tax benefit under

the false identities of Hassan Kamara and Leila Raymond,

Nura Kamara was ready to put the final parts of his grand plan into action.

Nura's residency was due to expire in 2009

and just prior to that, he submitted a further application

for permanent residence so that he could stay here indefinitely.

He submitted a letter with that to say that he was now

divorced from Helene. She was living elsewhere,

but that he was now living with Hadiza Mohammed with whom

he had a child and he wanted her to stay on the basis of his

permanent residence so that she could get residence in the UK as well.

Nura Kamara has now divorced his French wife and is busy

formulating a plan whereby he and Hadiza can stay in the UK.

Surely he's got to be married to an EU national

in order to get indefinite leave to stay?

If you've been in a marriage with an EU national and then separate,

it doesn't mean you can't apply for permanent residence,

providing that the European national was working in the UK

for a continuing period of five years.

Although he was now divorced,

he had been in a relationship for the required amount of time

with Helene and he was granted permanent residence.

Nura had provided the Home Office with information that appeared

to show Helene living and working in the UK

and on that basis he had been granted permanent residency,

but now, Tina took a closer look at the file.

In 2008, Helene suddenly gets resurrected.

She applies to HM Revenue & Customs,

she submits wage slips saying that she's a self-employed hairdresser.

She still has no National Insurance number,

but on the basis of the declared earnings,

Inland Revenue then bill her for small amounts of tax.

What's odd about this is that

although she claims to have separated from Nura in 2007,

the invoices she submits are from the address in Croydon.

The UK Border Agency and Croydon Council were confident

they had enough evidence to bring this couple in for questioning.

In November 2010, they were invited for an interview

at the council offices and told

it was to discuss benefit options with them.

Over nine years, they had claimed over £70,000 in housing benefit

and over £11,000 in council tax benefit

using fake European identities.

When they arrived, they were shown into a room

and there was a team from the UKBA there.

They were then arrested for immigration offences

and taken to Croydon Police Station.

Social services came to look after their child.

A team of officers from Croydon Council and the UKBA went to

the bed and breakfast they were staying in

and searched their accommodation there.

We discovered that there was a lockup storage unit which

was in South Norwood, so we left and went and searched that as well.

What they discovered was a whole pile of evidence that

appeared to strengthen their case against the couple.

There were a large number of photographs found.

Particularly, nine or ten pictures of the wedding between Nura and Helene.

The pictures were both before and during the ceremony, and that was all.

That was all there was of Helene, but there were hundreds of photographs

of Hadiza and Nura together before the wedding,

day after the wedding, on a family outing,

and it just detailed their life.

The search also revealed a number of incriminating documents,

suggesting that Nura had been manufacturing a life

for his ex-wife Helene without her knowledge.

There were also the wage slips relating to Helene Vingadio

that mentioned her being self-employed as a hairdresser.

There's a number of handwritten wage slips there

and the correspondence from HMRC.

This leads me to believe that it's Hadiza

and Nura that are submitting these invoices to HMRC

so that they can deal with any incoming post

and any further enquiries.

The more evidence they uncovered, the more convinced they became

that Nura had created a fake life for Helene

that she knew nothing about.

We also found a notebook that contained

crib notes for Helene Vingadio.

There was her name, date of birth, the date she started self-employment

and also what appears to be a practice signature for Vingadio,

the same as it appears on the application forms in the Home Office.

There was also Helene Vingadio's original residence permit

that was issued from April 2003 to April 2004 bearing her photograph.

What's more, they discovered that Hadiza Mohammed had been

working illegally in a care home using a fake British passport.

In a lockup where all their furniture was stored after the fire,

we found a jewellery box which contained the false British passport

that she'd actually used in order to gain work.

There was now enough evidence to prosecute Nura Kamara

and Hadiza Mohammed.

Nura Kamara was charged with immigration offences which were...

Those are the benefit offences. Hadiza was charged with...

The couple both pleaded guilty.

In June 2011, Nura received a three-year prison sentence.

Hadiza was sentenced to 18 months in jail.

Both are appealing against removal from the UK when they're released.

He deserved the three-year sentence. Hadiza was very lucky

to get away with an 18-month sentence.

It was only the fact she's got children that stopped him

from giving her a longer sentence as well.

Nura Kamara had cheated the system to become a permanent UK resident

and at the time of their arrest,

his partner's application was being considered.

They had made up false identities to swindle

thousands out of British public funds.

Nura Kamara and Hadiza Mohammed were claiming benefits under the names of

Hassan Kamara and Leila Raymond right up to the day they were arrested.

One of the conditions of his leave to remain was that he had no recourse

to public funds, therefore he had to keep the two identities going

in order to claim the benefits.

It's systematic abuse of the British system of benefits and welfare.

It's taking advantage of people that actually need the money.

If it wasn't for the fire, they wouldn't have come to

the attention of the council or the Home Office.

They would have been given leave to remain in the UK

and possibly continued with the fraud for another good few years.

Nura and Hadiza scrounged money off the taxpayer for nine whole years,

and if that hasn't wound you up, cop a load of this.

We found details of property and land owned in Nigeria

and on this land, there was a goat farm, a fish farm.

There was also a house and there was a farm shop.

We think all of that was funded by the benefits we paid them.

That really gets my goat,

but I'm glad to say, it's game over for Nura and Hadiza.

Their master plan has finally been found out.

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