Episode 1 Britain on the Fiddle

He's carrying fishing rods on his back.

Yeah, I've got him, Deb.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with him, is there?

No.

He's fit and well but claiming disability.

Benefit fraud costs the British taxpayer £1.6 billion a year.

My name is Richard Bilton,

and I've spent the last five years

following benefit fraud investigators...

We're about to catch criminals. I love it.

..and the suspects they're after.

I'm not guilty of anything.

What they're saying I'm guilty of, I'm not.

Yeah, under the underpass.

In this episode, on the hunt for a benefit cheat

with multiple identities.

Are you Angel Duffy?

-No.

-Are you Angel Jackson?

If you look at this particular case,

it's really hard to understand who this person actually is.

We track down suspects involved in a new kind of fraud...

I just want to have a quick word with you about your benefits

cos you get about a bit, don't you?

You claim here in Belgium and you claim in the UK.

How is that possible?

Do you want to see a fake boarding pass?

..and the smuggler who can get in and out of airports undetected.

They must think I'm Mickey Bin Laden,

not Mickey Pitt.

This programme contains some strong language.

It's five in the morning in Croydon

and officers from the council's fraud squad

are preparing for an arrest.

I've brought in biscuits.

-Biscuits!

-I thought that we're going to need something,

so I've got us some giant salt pretzels.

Got biscuits

and we can share a banana.

Today, we're quite excited

because we are actually going to get to meet

Angel Jackson, or Angel Duffy.

Andrea Cordrey and Zoe Neal usually handle petty fraudsters

fiddling the system, but tonight's target has two identities.

As Angel Jackson, she's a disabled, single mum,

who gets her rent paid by the council.

But as Angel Duffy, she's fit and well and owns two properties.

Investigators think she's been using the two IDs

to fraudulently claim over £100,000 in housing benefit.

At this stage it just feels like we're opening up Pandora's Box.

We just don't know where it's going to end.

The plan is to arrest Angel

and search both her homes for evidence of her crime.

What we normally find is a stash of porn,

a little stash of drugs

and lots and lots and lots of correspondence.

The last few searches I've done,

they've all seemed to have a lot of religious texts.

Copies of the Bible, religious pictures.

I don't quite know why, because it does say in the Bible,

"Thou shalt not steal."

The team isn't sure which property Angel lives in.

They're hoping this dawn raid will catch her by surprise.

Hello. It's the police, do you mind letting us into the block, please?

That's her, isn't it? I've got the picture downstairs in the car.

There are similarities in the way she looks to Mrs Duffy

and I've got a photograph of her, so I just want to go and get it.

It's just scary.

Nobody's dead. How long have you been living here, madam?

-How long...

-A couple of weeks.

A couple of weeks?

Have you got any other forms of ID, madam, like a passport or anything?

Not here, not at the moment.

At the moment, the problem is, we think you might be Mrs Duffy.

I know, but it's very easy, madam, to apply for a driving licence.

This is a photo we've got of Mrs Duffy.

Yeah, yes, that's her.

-That's her?

-Yes.

-Looks very similar to yourself, madam.

Let's hold those two photos up to one another.

You must be sisters?

Yes, I said that, yeah.

Otherwise, she wouldn't let me stay here for free like that,

she would not.

That's why I even told you, that if you want,

I can organise for her to come.

We do believe that, you know, you are Mrs Duffy.

So listen to my colleague.

I'm arresting you on suspicion of fraud by false representation.

My dear, it's just not me.

Do you want to get yourself dressed, all right?

I'm getting out of here now?

Yeah, you're going to come with us to the police station, madam.

So, do you want to get yourself dressed now?

With the suspect under arrest, the search can begin.

Right.

Correspondence to an Angel Jackson and an Angel Duffy.

This indicates she's spent over £2,000 on carpets.

I think if she's been on benefit for years, how can she afford that?

Oooh!

English, Irish and Ghanaian passports are found.

So are numerous bank cards and mobile phones.

Oh, wait up.

Oh!

All 50s.

They also find keys for the other property she owns nearby.

Ah, they're in, the key worked.

From outside, it looks like an average home.

It's a bit different on the inside.

Now, this is a telly!

-What is that?

-It's a bar.

A bar, yeah. There'll be alcohol on the back shelves.

That's definitely the lady we've got.

I'm just thinking about, when we went in, she was bold-faced...

..very seasoned liar.

-It sounded real.

-Mm?

-It sounded real.

Yeah.

They appear to have caught a sophisticated fraudster

working the system.

But first, they've got to make sure they've arrested the right woman.

We lose £1.6 billion a year through benefit fraud,

but that figure is dwarfed by what's stolen from the taxman.

Nearly £16 billion a year,

and the frauds are getting increasingly inventive.

Some cigarettes, please.

-Nice one.

-£9?

You are the most expensive shop in London for cigarettes.

No, man. No, no, man, no.

-You are.

-No.

Mickey Pitt is a smuggler

who likes to think he offers hard-up smokers a valuable service.

£9, £6.

Where do you want to come?

All I was doing was facilitating people

to purchase these at a cheaper price.

That's what I got sent to prison for.

70% of the price of a packet of cigarettes comes from taxes

and Mickey has made a lot of money

flogging duty-free cigs on the black market.

I didn't choose fraud, it just evolved.

It just... I don't know,

I'd like to have been a brain surgeon or a pilot, you know?

I missed those opportunities.

I don't pillage and plunder,

but, you know, I take, perhaps, things that are not lawfully mine.

Like the duty that I've evaded.

But, you know,

I can live with that.

The type of people that buy my cigarettes know what I've done,

and they'll say, "Good on you."

But Mickey's no ordinary cigarette smuggler.

He's the mastermind of an operation

that used fake boarding passes

to get in and out of airports undetected.

-So, Michael Pitt?

-He's an inveterate cigarette smuggler.

He was prosecuted by the Met police back in 2006.

He then learned to evolve his operation.

I've come to the headquarters of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs,

or HMRC, to meet officers who are investigating Pitt.

When he was arrested, he couldn't help boasting about his scam.

He's telling all that to you?

Yeah, and it's fair to say he was remanded in custody.

When he asked the sergeant why, the sergeant said,

"Well, you've just told the officer you can go anywhere you want."

He was remanded in custody.

Isn't it sort of terrifying

that you can produce counterfeit boarding passes?

The thought behind that is really quite worrying, isn't it?

It was really surprising to us,

particularly the extent to which they went

to ultimately produce boarding cards for the whole of the country.

Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs

started investigating Pitt

after two of his men were caught leaving Gatwick with suitcases

stuffed with thousands of tax-free cigarettes.

They'd somehow managed to purchase them from the duty-free shop

without having any form of legitimate travel.

The UK Border Agency managed to seize a forged boarding card

off one of them. So we were starting to put together a picture

of how they operated.

Two days later, at Stansted Airport,

another member of Mickey's gang was caught with a fake boarding pass.

Then it became apparent that this is a larger scale.

Not only have we now got two airports,

we have more people doing this.

Mickey Pitt's smuggling operation

was soon unfolding in front of their eyes.

This was almost a machine,

the way they, on a daily basis, they were going out, going to airports,

coming back with the cigarettes.

They were then going off to be sold.

The next day, they were back at it again.

This is Pitt looking at a whole selection

of different boarding cards.

The gang didn't even have to take flights.

They'd also worked out how to use the fake passes

to get out of the airport undetected.

They certainly knew the rat runs, they knew how to get in,

they knew how to get out.

They knew the airports better, in some cases, than our own officers.

Pitt's block of flats soon came under 24-hour surveillance.

This is a scene with a very large, wheeled suitcase.

And these bags are full of cigarettes?

Both are full of cigarettes.

And then, later that day, onward distributors came

and collected the cigarettes.

Officers believed the gang smuggled more than 2 million cigarettes,

earning themselves hundreds of thousands of pounds.

With the evidence on camera, Pitt's gang was arrested.

I thought, "What a cocky individual."

It was tantamount to a confession, actually,

and it was something we served in evidence.

I was pissed off, I was angry and I said to them, you know,

basically, you're arseholes at your job.

But, it didn't do me no favours.

Didn't do me no favours.

Mickey got five years.

He's now out of prison, but he's not out of trouble.

He faces being sent back to prison because of the same crime.

You want to see a fake boarding pass?

You wanted to see a fake boarding pass, didn't you?

For all intents and purposes,

it doesn't look no different from a real one.

You take that to the airport, present it to the security man.

He then scans that bar code, it beeps, and lets you in.

What was it like discovering you could do this?

Like discovering the Holy Grail.

Mickey says producing the passes was simple -

all he needed was a computer,

a specialist programme and a printer.

I mean, it's a bit embarrassing that I was able to do it with such ease,

you know what I mean? I would just manufacture the boarding pass,

give it to somebody, they go to the airport,

purchase cigarettes and walk out.

That easy.

Unfortunately for Mickey,

handling the fallout hasn't been so straightforward.

I'm only allowed, in my possession at any one time, 200 cigarettes,

50 cigars and 100 cigarillos.

What the fuck is a cigarillo?

He's been placed on a Serious Crime Prevention Order.

If he breaks any of its conditions, he'll be sent back to jail.

I'm not allowed to go to any airports.

I'm only allowed one mobile telephone, I must get it registered.

I'm only allowed to have £1,000 in cash at any one time.

I should be so lucky.

They wanted to ban me from telephone boxes for five years.

They must think I'm Mickey Bin Laden,

not Mickey Pitt.

But his biggest problem comes from something investigators found

when they searched his flat.

Where did they find the hard drive?

-In my kitchen.

-Can you show us? Show us.

It's a little cupboard here, look.

That's it in there, look, a little compartment.

This hiding place was found to contain £3,000 in cash

and a hard drive which was taken away for analysis.

We were absolutely amazed at the complexity of it all.

I think in total, there were nearly 7,000 boarding passes.

It's a digital fingerprint that the taxman's used

to try and work out how much Pitt made from his scam.

The benefit that he's got from his crime will be recovered by HMRC

under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

HMRC is now taking Mickey to court

to try and force him to pay back the money he stole.

They will say to Pitt, in effect, that he has to,

he's benefited from a set amount, he pays that money back to us,

or he serves a default sentence, which is a further prison sentence.

You go to prison,

you come out, you're on licence and you have to tread carefully,

and you kind of live with that,

but the confiscation order, it's bollocks.

I don't know what to think at this moment in time.

You know?

I feel punch drunk.

Like I've been bashed around the ring by Mike Tyson.

You know? That's how I feel.

The SMS is, don't fuck with these people.

But for every fraudster caught,

there are plenty more trying to exploit gaps in the system.

In 2012, I caught up with investigators in Hillingdon.

Do you know if you can put in a number?

Just type in 51. Double-click.

There.

Kiri and Yvonne are investigating a new kind of fraud

found in the borough -

people who fraudulently claim benefits here and abroad.

They call it double dipping.

So that's the address we are paying housing and council tax benefit.

-That's the application from the DWP.

-Oh, right, yeah.

In this case, they've got information

that their suspect is also claiming in Belgium.

This is the property in Antwerp, according to this information.

The claimant's spouse owns this property.

To arrest him, they need to make sure he is in Hillingdon

and Google Maps has provided a clue.

That looks like a green coloured car.

Yes, a metallic green.

Metallic green, yeah.

The council has had an anonymous tip-off

that the suspect drives a people carrier with a Belgian numberplate.

When we looked at this property address in Belgium,

we can see there's a people carrier outside,

so that's quite interesting for us.

When we do visit the address,

we will be looking out for a people carrier here.

They've got the evidence they need to arrest their man,

they just need to make sure he's in the country,

so they're going to see if they can spot

a green people carrier outside his house.

-This is the road.

-Right.

Yes, I can see no...

It's this one with the tree, the big tree.

There's the Volkswagen.

Right. That looks like a bottle green colour.

That has a foreign numberplate.

I have the number of the police team

and I will notify them that we're parked here and waiting for them.

Yeah.

The man is taken away for questioning.

These arrests are now becoming a regular event.

Hello, sir.

In a short time, Kiri has built up a long list of suspects

thought to be double dipping, and he's worried about the scale.

I don't know how far it has gone into our system,

but it is, it is easy, and there is no way of preventing it

unless we get in touch with them countries.

This box is full of application forms.

Almost all of them double dipping cases.

Denmark, Sweden, Norway.

Most of the Scandinavian countries.

They're all being used to claim benefits.

The scenario is the same.

When someone claims that the only benefit they are receiving is

from the Department for Work and Pensions

and housing benefits

and when the bank accounts or bank transactions

show clearly there is more money going into the bank accounts,

then questions need to be asked.

So it's a really significant problem you're facing?

It is, yes, yes.

When you're coming back, you know it's raining today,

do you want some trainers or something that will cover?

-Yes.

-Yeah?

Back in Croydon, the team have finished their search,

and they are now taking their suspect to the police station

to try and identify who she really is.

They think she's an identity fraudster

known either as Angel Jackson or Angel Duffy.

It's basically based on the evidence, and the evidence,

in my opinion, suggests that the lady we have got is Angel Duffy.

Okey dokey, right,

can I ask you your full name, please?

She insists she's Angel's half sister.

And she's got a British passport to prove it,

but it's one of three found in the flat

they want to question her about.

This is this... Your passport in the name of Anderson,

the one that you say is yours, there's a photograph

of a lady in that passport

and I'm going to put all three side-by-side...

Would you say that those three people are the same person?

You wouldn't?

Diva's British passport turns out to be real,

and they have to release her on bail

while they investigate further.

We've got three passports in three different nationalities,

three different names.

Ghanaian... In the name of Duffy.

Irish in the name of Jackson.

-Jackson.

-And UK in the name of Anderson.

-I'm 100% sure...

-100% sure!

..it's the same person.

We're talking about someone who looks exactly the same.

Paul O'Rourke from the Department of Work and Pensions

has joined the team.

At the end of the day, it doesn't actually matter who she is

or what she calls herself, she can call herself Minnie Mouse,

it doesn't actually matter.

We just need to be able to prove

that the identities are all the same person,

that's really what it's about.

But proving that won't be easy.

All of her documentation appears genuine.

This lady has three separate National Insurance numbers.

That should not be possible, but she does have it.

It's not something that even the average Joe Criminal

would know how to do.

Then there's the driving licences, the bank cards,

the NHS documents, and all that money found

at the bottom of her wardrobe, £22,000.

What we're looking at is organised fraud.

This lady has set out to make a significant profit

from the public purse.

That letter from the landlady says, confirms that she's been a tenant...

David Hogan is head of Croydon's fraud squad.

This case, to my mind, is scratching the surface.

I think there are hundreds, if not thousands, of these sorts of cases,

of people who've got into the system,

and they've got so deep into the system

that it's really hard now to, you know,

if you look at this particular case, it's really hard to understand

who this person actually is.

That's the challenge the team faces.

If they can't prove Diva is really Angel,

the suspect is likely to get away.

Oh, this is bollocks.

Mickey Pitt is getting ready for court.

He's being prosecuted by the taxman

who want him to pay back the money

he made from his cigarette smuggling.

It's like a dentist appointment, I suppose.

It's something that has to be done.

Don't brush your teeth, you got to go to the dentist, ain't you?

The trial is taking place in Brighton.

It's near where Mickey's smuggling operation was first uncovered.

This is Gatwick Airport, it's where I used to work.

What memories does it bring back?

All bad memories. It was a horrible place to go to.

Full of grasses and busybodies.

He's done his time for that crime

and this hearing will determine how much he has to pay back.

What they're supposed to do

is identify how much I've obtained illegally,

and then they're supposed to ascertain how much money

I have left and what assets I have.

And then they would say to the court,

"This man has stolen £100 or £1 million," or whatever it is,

"and this is what he has as a result of it."

Mickey says he made about 40 grand,

and he doesn't have the assets to pay it back.

I got sent to prison initially for five years for smuggling cigarettes.

That's harsh? You don't identify this as a real crime.

Purchasing cigarettes at the airport and then selling them on to people.

It's just saving a little bit of tax.

Exactly.

There you go. It's the mentality of people, see?

But the taxman isn't so relaxed about Mickey's crime.

HMRC's barrister will be arguing

that the gang made nearly £500,000 and they should pay it back.

The judge can make a confiscation order in the full amount,

which is just in excess of £400,000.

He will give Mr Pitt time to pay that.

If Mr Pitt doesn't, then he's liable to be sent to prison

for five years.

It's a lot more than Mickey claims his gang made.

In the coming days, he will have to convince the judge

HMRC's figures are wrong.

It's rubbish. Look.

They're just cigarette sales, you might have bought them.

I'm telling you that's nothing to do with me. You know?

It's crazy what they're saying.

You know, it just doesn't add up, but I would say that, wouldn't I?

You see that's all I've got, look - debts.

Look, this is me.

Debts, debts, debts.

There's a saying in a song by Bob Dylan,

"steal a little and they throw you in jail,

"steal a lot and they make you a king,"

so there is me, under £200,000 that I've stolen,

I'm being sent to prison for five years.

And there are these people that are swerving hundreds of millions

and they're called sirs.

What is a sir?

Is that a knight in shining armour?

Is that a knight in shining armour who's helping people?

I don't try to justify it, it was wrong,

but on the grand scale of things, what it is

is I've been sent to prison for five years initially

because I raided the public's purse.

So though I take from the public's purse,

I reimburse them by cheaper alternative cigarettes -

not substandard, not dangerous, the same cigarette

but with a less taxation attached to it.

I should be knighted.

You know?

And I mean that. Well, to an extent.

You know?

But Mickey isn't up for a seat in the House of Lords -

he's up in front of a judge who could order him to cough up a small

fortune or go back to jail.

It's not poor old me - no, I've done wrong,

I should have been held accountable, but to what extent?

To this extent?

No. No chance.

This is bollocks, this is.

I'm in Hillingdon with investigator Kiri to find out more about

the double dipping operations.

Have you been surprised by the idea of this double dipping?

How easy it is for someone to just walk in here...

..put in a claim

for housing benefit, council tax benefit

and the very same afternoon could travel back to where

they've come from and start claiming from there as well.

There are claims here for benefits,

claims over there and there are houses here given to them

by the local authorities and also houses in other countries.

-There is no link.

-It's not a good one.

-No link to see whether they are

being checked or whether the checks are being carried out.

It is so easy.

One case stands out.

Khalid Hussain is a Belgian national with a legitimate passport.

He's rented a property and he asked for help from England taxpayers,

which we are giving it to him,

so the information is he's not in this country,

he's living in Bruges.

How much money is involved here?

The authorities in Belgium have not calculated their loss yet,

but our loss up to now is about £25,000.

Hussain's arrest is arranged for the early hours of the morning.

So we're just following the police team.

Kiri, are you ready?

Dawn and Doug, can you go around the back, please?

Morning. Hi, my name's Sergeant Quinn, I'm from Hillingdon police,

I've got a warrant to search these premises.

It turns out he's not in the country.

The police asked him about Mr Hussain

and the answer given to the police officer was

that he's having a holiday in Belgium.

A few days later and the whole family has gone.

Is it frustrating for you that he, he has effectively done a runner?

It is. It is because I've done all the work and now he's in Belgium

with thousands of pounds claimed by him from the taxpayers.

I am not able to proceed with this.

So where has Mr Hussain gone?

I'm going to try and find him in Belgium

and see what he's been up to.

-RECORDED MESSAGE:

-'..penny, Jules. You are not going to get away with this.

'Stupid cow, you're so thick, let go of me...'

Andrea's had a breakthrough -

she's found something which could establish the true identity of

the mystery woman she's arrested.

'I'm not letting you get away with this, Jules.'

'What are you talking?'

'Why don't you say it to the camera and then we'll show it all in court?'

All I did was just google the name Duffy and this is what I found -

"Angel Juliet Duffy, fraud."

-That's the title.

-Someone has put this clip on YouTube.

'Smile for the camera, Jules. We've got to know your real name

'and what you've been really doing in the flat.

'Let go of me!'

It's an investigator's dream to have something like this.

I've managed to track down the person who put the clip on YouTube.

She's been very willing to come and see us, in fact, quite excited.

'Can you just drop it, please?

-'No.'

-'Drop what.'

-'Drop what?'

OK, if you could take a seat. Thank you so much for coming in.

These friends rented one of Angel's properties.

It was the flat Angel was claiming housing benefit to live in,

so she was fraudulently getting two incomes from it -

the benefit and the rent.

When we moved in, she was so lovely.

She said Salomon was like the son she never had

and we'd go to her house for tea.

We paid our deposit in cash and then the rent as well

cos she said that she didn't trust banks.

Did she give you any receipts?

-No.

-No.

-No.

Did you not question her about that?

-We did.

-Well, the thing is...

To be honest, she was so nice and...

Things soon started going wrong -

the washing machine didn't work and there was no hot water.

We started complaining about all the stuff going on in the flat.

-Right.

-That's when she started getting aggressive.

-Right.

-She would just burst in at any time in the flat, no warning,

no nothing, no notice.

She would just come in and she would be shouting the odds,

especially at Salomon, that,

"You're doing this, you're breaking my flat,

"you're not going to get your deposit money back."

She said, "We're going to see, I've done that before to people like you

"guys, I will keep doing it, blah, blah, blah."

-I was, "All right, fine."

-They say things came to a head four months

after they moved in when Angel turned up with some heavies.

She brought four guys and they were throwing things out,

I was like, "Jules, why are you behaving like this?

"We just paid our rent, you know,

"we just need this and this fixed and that's all."

-She came with those guys, they threatened to beat me up.

-OK.

-I was absolutely scared.

-I can imagine. Quite intimidating, really.

That's when I decided to get my phone out

and I was like, "I'm going to record all of this."

I say in the video that you're not going to get away with this,

that's all I want, just for them to bring her down

cos she's a horrible person, manipulative and aggressive.

This could be crucial evidence.

The couple can identify the real Angel Duffy.

'You are not getting away with this. Trust me, all of you.'

I just wanted people to know what she looks like

cos I'm sure she has done it to so many other people.

It's so great that finally, finally

something is happening now.

The picture I now have of Duffy is

that she is a very, very manipulative, conniving individual.

She is a bully,

she had completely got them where she wanted them to be.

There are a number of other people

that we've come across that has been affected by her behaviour.

She is really a nasty piece of work.

Hopefully, today is the last day, hopefully, this is the end of it.

I don't know what the outcome's going to be.

It's judgment day for Mickey Pitt.

You seem remarkably cheerful for

a man that might be faced with a prison sentence later on today.

Cos I'm eating.

Right, I need to... I need to get dressed.

He's back in court.

The judge has decided how much he made from his cigarette smuggling

and how much he has to pay back.

What I'd like to happen?

I'd like the judge to say, "You can have that money back

"we took off you when we arrested you." It's about £3,000.

That's what I'd like him to do.

But I don't think he's going to do that.

Hopefully, he's going to say I've had about 50K out of it

and is going to be happy that I've got no money, I've got no hidden assets.

The right approach would be just to give me a nominal penalty, you know,

£100, £10, £1 fine or whatever.

How are you going to feel once this is over?

Relieved. It depends on what the outcome is though, as well, though.

I might be pissed off.

If things go badly and he can't pay his debts,

this case will be hanging over him for years to come.

Even if he serves a sentence, that doesn't wipe out the debt.

It still remains, and so this process can go on and on,

and he can be pursued in the courts for the money.

The judge rules the gang made more than 160 grand.

He accepts Mickey spent most of his share,

but he's ordered him to pay £36,000 in six months, or go back to jail.

I feel like laughing, but I don't know whether to cry!

It's bollocks! Haven't got money!

I'm skint!

I think there are going to be some people who are going to say,

-"It's fair because you've broken the law."

-I've broken the law,

I went to prison for five years, initially got five years.

It was... I'm a cigarette fucking smuggler,

not a fucking rapist or a fucking paedophile.

I got five years for cigarette smuggling, the Court of Appeal said

that was a bit harsh. So they knocked it down to four years.

He's just given me another year back.

I kind of put myself in this predicament,

but I haven't got the money they said I've got.

They said I've hid the money. I've hid the money!

I haven't hid it!

You know?

It's just bollocks.

I felt like saying to the judge that he might have sent me to jail now.

But, you know, I've got six months to win the lottery

between now and then so, you know, who knows?

Yeah, they want... Those fucking wankers want...

Said I've got 35K hidden somewhere.

But with a 14-month jail sentence hanging over him,

the pressure's on for Mickey to find the cash.

So this is Bruges,

and we're here because we're looking at the case of Khalid Hussain.

Now, this is a guy who claims benefits in the UK,

but the suggestion is that he actually also lives and works here

in Bruges. We have an address where he was last registered,

so we're going to go and see if we can find that,

and use that as a starting point for our investigation.

This is where...

..he was registered as living, just here on the end.

But they're quite nice houses.

I've teamed up with a local fixer.

She gets out to see what we can find.

Yes, here we are.

I have some publicity with me to put in the letterbox if needed.

-Sort of cover, yeah?

-Exactly.

-And as you can see, here he is.

-Wow.

Now, Khalid Hussain is not that uncommon a name,

but nonetheless this seems to suggest that this is where he is.

Yeah, yeah.

As you can see here...

It looks like Khalid Hussain is here,

but we need proof. We need to see him.

This guy looks very wet.

Just as we're about to give up, the front door opens.

Damn, I can't see him because of the bloody rain.

Not much of a glimpse.

It could be Khalid Hussain, but we'll have to keep on looking.

Put it down.

-SHE SNIFFS

-I just wanted a sniff.

-Can I have some cake, Andrea?

-Yes.

It's been two months since

Andrea's team arrested the woman with multiple identities.

The evidence is building she's the person they're after -

a fraudster called Angel.

Final confirmation comes from Angel's own solicitor.

He's confirmed that Diva Paris Anderson...

-Yeah.

-..the person who we arrested, is indeed Angel Juliet Jackson.

And he said...

-What did I tell you?

-He doesn't...

What did we say? What did we say all along?

She's just a compulsive liar all the way through.

It's one lie after the other.

Angel is now suspected of committing more than 20 offences,

from using a false ID to housing benefit fraud.

She's also linked to more than 35 bank accounts,

and there are some serious sums going through them.

£2,000, £5,000.

£22,000.

£6,000.

The highest figure I have going into one of the accounts

is £50,000 in a day.

I don't know where this money's coming from.

The problem is, for us and the council, are the same -

the money tends to be a little bit transient. It tends to move.

They decide to charge Angel as quickly as possible.

They're worried that she and the money may disappear abroad.

Back in Belgium, and we're struggling to find Khalid Hussain

at his house, so we're trying to find another approach.

We're trying to find out if Khalid Hussain is living

and working, crucially, here in Bruges.

We're going to follow our main clue,

which is the last place he was registered as working,

which is Cafe Central, here right in the centre of Bruges.

Yeah, we might only have a starter, actually, you see.

-WAITER:

-Yeah, no problem.

So we've been here about half an hour.

We haven't seen Khalid Hussain yet.

One of the crew, posing as a TV location scout,

asks if she can look around.

At the back of the restaurant,

she gets a glimpse of a man we think might be Khalid Hussain.

A-ha! Hi.

How much are they?

-How much are the cigarettes here?

-HE SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY

He disappears into the kitchen, so we talk our way in there as well.

Hello. I'm sorry to disturb you.

-Yeah, hi.

-It's fine. Television, hey?

-Watch out.

-And there he is, right at the back...

-It's a great kitchen.

..Khalid Hussain.

You guys seem a very good team.

Yeah, there's pretty...

Yeah, I know you speak English, you were helping me

with the cigarette machine.

-Caught you out.

-He's very shy.

-Are you?

It's not surprising he's cautious.

Over the last two years, he's stolen £25,000 from the UK taxpayer.

Have you been to the UK?

Yeah?

Did you like it? Which part did you visit? Do you know? Uh-huh.

Sorry?

Uh-huh.

We've found him.

When his shift is over, I'd like to have a word with him.

Today, we're going to arrest,

we're hoping to arrest Angel Juliet Jackson.

Back in Croydon, and Andrea is now ready to charge Angel.

But there's a problem. They don't know where she is.

She has broken her bail conditions.

She has not returned to the... for the bail date.

She has supplied a letter from a hospital to say that

she's had a suspected stroke.

I can't take her letter on face value,

because we have evidence showing

that she's falsified documents from doctors previously.

The worry is she's about to do a runner.

KNOCKING

Definitely came from there.

Right now, we've heard someone in there.

We believe we've heard someone in there.

It's Andrea Cordrey, from Croydon Council

with the police. Can you open the door, please?

Angel, you need to come to the door where you can hear me.

We know you're in there, so we can force entry if we need to.

-But this isn't Scooby-Doo, unfortunately.

-No, no.

It's sad, really, but we'll have to go in. We'll have to force entry.

Angel, we're coming in now.

You need to stand back away from the door, or come and open it now.

Police! Police!

-There's no balcony here?

-No balcony, no.

Nothing. Nothing.

The walls are so thin in these buildings that it's quite

possible that what we heard was from next door, then.

From the walls next door.

They've just missed her.

The windows are still open.

The electric heaters are still on.

-What is that book?

-The Master...

Grimoire. Grimoire Of Magical Rites.

The witchcraft, or the juju stuff.

Have you seen her lately?

I think I saw her last night.

Last night? OK.

-But not this morning. Not this morning.

-Not this morning.

Angel has vanished.

It's what they feared.

All they can do now is hope that the police can find her.

So we're outside the restaurant in Bruges where we know Khalid Hussain

works, and we know where he is working tonight.

And we are waiting for him.

My name's Richard Bilton. I work for the BBC.

I just want to have a quick word with you about your benefits,

cos you get about a bit, don't you?

You claim here in Belgium and you claim in the UK.

How's that possible?

Just tell us, how could you claim benefits here in Belgium

and in the UK?

But you live here.

Sir, please just give me your explanation.

He eventually stops to talk.

OK, but you did claim benefits here in Belgium, didn't you?

Now you've got a job now, but you did in the past, didn't you?

In the past? You've claimed benefits in Belgium?

Yeah, yeah.

So you claimed benefits in Belgium and you claim benefits in the UK.

So Mr Hussain says he's sorry.

It's not really us he has to explain to.

It's the British taxpayer, and more immediately, it's the police.

I take our footage back to show Kiri.

-There he is.

-Oh, yes.

Mr Hussain.

ON VIDEO: 'I just wanted to have a quick word with you about your benefits. Cos you claim benefits

'in a country that you don't live!'

When you see his life, I'm not defending what he did,

but he doesn't have a glamorous life. He's working late shifts

at the back of a kitchen in Belgium.

Does it temper the way you feel about him to see that he...?

No, no. There's nothing stopping him from claiming in Belgium.

That's where he lives.

I mean, if he's in receipt of low earnings from his employer,

there's nothing stopping him from claiming in Belgium.

What is wrong and seriously wrong is claiming to be living in the UK and

claiming off of our taxpayers.

There are thousands of people here who deserve help.

And he has taken all that money away from them.

20,000 plus from the taxpayers.

How many cases are there like that?

A lot, lot more. How many claims are made using easy passports?

Do we have the means to check whether

these people are claiming in other countries?

I don't think so.

Do we have a system in place to cross-match the details?

I don't think so. So these people do get away with it.

There's got to be some way of preventing this.

Five years on, and Mr Hussain hasn't returned to face justice.

Today, councils don't investigate this kind of benefit fraud.

That job's been handed to the Department of Work and Pensions.

-Whilst I'm not saying she hasn't had a stroke...

-There's nothing showing that she has.

-I'm not a doctor.

There's nothing in this paperwork to say that she has had a stroke.

It's just she went to hospital complaining of symptoms

that could be a stroke.

Andrea and her team are at the police station,

preparing to welcome a special guest.

Angel Duffy, or Angel Jackson, or Diva Paris Anderson,

has decided to turn herself in.

She claims to have suffered a stroke.

-OVER INTERCOM:

-'Hello?'

-WEAKLY:

-Hello.

-'Hello.'

-I've got an appointment.

Jackson is your surname?

She's here, that's the main thing.

She'll be assessed by the police and we'll go from there.

Right, Angel. Very importantly, have you ever tried to harm yourself?

SHE PANTS

Angel, it's taking more effort for you to breathe heavily like that

than it is for you to talk to me.

So can you talk to me, please?

The team has evidence suggesting Angel has faked strokes before

to claim disability benefit.

They're going to get a police doctor to look at her.

Angel, listen, you've put your coat on yourself,

you've got yourself dressed and you've got yourself here.

I need you to take it off so that we can search you properly.

All right?

This is just pure drama.

Oscar-winning performance, exactly as I thought it would be.

If I was a betting woman, I would be winning right now.

The only thing that was missing

was her throwing herself literally on the floor.

She knows what's coming.

She knows that there is no way of avoiding it.

And what she's trying to do is play the card that

"I am so ill, I am sick, I can't walk, I can't talk,

"I can't read, I can't write."

-MUMBLING:

-Dear God... Don't let my...

The police doctor says she's fit to be detained and interviewed.

Something which you later rely on in court and anything you do or say

may be given in evidence.

Can you tell me when it was that you came to this country?

No comment? OK.

What name was it that you used to come to this country?

OK. You might as well raise your...

I'm tired.

Two hours later, and the mood changes dramatically.

And she was accusing you of chucking her out of her property as her

-landlady.

-Obviously somebody's upset about something.

-You seem a little bit better than you were feeling...

-Yes!

-You're being quite animated.

-Because it's too much!

It's too much when a person puts something on you. It's too much!

People's lives should be more important!

You've done that... My health is at risk!

You put my health at risk!

Doctors are telling you...

She is remanded in custody until her trial.

This Ms Cordrey, what does she want from you?

We are now going to start getting on with the job at hand.

This is to bring her to court

so that the victims can get some justice.

Is there anything else you need? You sure you don't want anything to eat?

-No, just give me some space.

-Yeah? OK.

-I appreciate it.

-No problem at all.

-But Angel won't be imprisoned for long.

In the coming months,

events will take place that will turn this case on its head.

It's been over a year since Mickey was ordered to pay back his £36,000.

I've come to see how he's getting on.

-You all right?

-Yeah, I'm good.

-So this is where you ended up?

One of the places, yeah.

Mickey didn't pay and was sentenced to 14 months.

What was your attitude like this second time,

compared to serving the first sentence?

-Was it different?

-I was pissed off.

It was fucking wrong!

I swear on my children's life, I didn't make that money.

I didn't make the money. You're laughing!

I'm not laughing! I'm only laughing because your passion, it never dims.

No, but it's the truth!

It's not about being passionate, it's about being honest!

Despite going to prison twice because of the same crime,

he remains defiant.

I'm telling you this. If there is a God upstairs...

-Yes.

-..he'll let me in.

-Right.

-He'll put me on probation, but he'll let me in.

-Yes.

-But he won't let Tony Blair in.

-He probably...

-Or Georgie Bush.

He'd probably search you as you came in, wouldn't he?

-In case you're bringing in some...

-He's got magic eyes.

He's got magic eyes!

Do you look back and regret it now?

Getting caught, yeah. My only regret is getting caught.

I'm not going to burn in hell for what I done.

You know? What I done was...

-acceptable.

-You can't do that. You can't get away with that,

-I don't think.

-Why not?

-Because...

Because basically, you were making money out of...

-Yeah.

-..cigarettes, that duty wasn't paid on them.

-Yeah.

-We all depend on that duty.

Yeah, no, no. But in turn, the people that buy them are saving money.

There's no moral case to this.

You can't accept that.

Listen, it was wrong. It was wrong.

But I will live with myself.

You know? I don't think...

I think that when somebody, you know,

pays himself £1 billion and decides to use, you know, non-domiciles

to evade tax, OK,

or avoid tax,

is more morally wrong than me.

Yeah, but that's like saying, "I only beat people up,

"but he murders people, so therefore my crime doesn't really compare to him."

You committed a crime. You just committed a crime. It doesn't matter what anybody else is doing.

But I was a drop in the ocean.

You know? It was pennies, what I obtained.

But the powerful and the elite...

we won't worry about them.

They've got friends in high places.

That's how it is. But you know this.

Could you ever imagine yourself back in another scam?

No. No. I mean, what do you want me to say?

That, you know, I'm digging a tunnel to my local bank?

No, I don't, but after all you've been through,

this is the time now to just... straight and narrow.

Yeah. I would like to...

I don't know.

Pay my debt to society, you know, to pay my way in life.

But, you know,

like I said, my prospects are pretty slim.

I don't think I've got, you know, I'm going to be headhunted.

You know? I'll let fate decide what happens to me.

I hope Mickey doesn't leave it to fate

and uses his abilities to try and pay his debts legally.

Otherwise, he's going to have a 36 grand debt hanging over him

for the rest of his life.

Next week, there's a dramatic twist in Angel Jackson's case.

It's a bit stressful.

We got a phone call from the prison informing us that she had a stroke.

It seems as if she's beaten me.

And the net closes on fraudsters using benefits to live abroad.

If you look up at the camera, imagine what he was thinking.

"Are you watching me?"

Hell yeah. We are watching you.