UK's biggest benefit cheats - Including Bulgarian gang who stole as much as £54m

Benefits fraud in Britain totalled £7.4billion last year up from £6.3bn in the financial year ending April 2023. Several fraudsters have been brought to justice in recent years.

The Government says it prevented losses of £18bn last year through counterfraud and measures to stop fraudsters in their tracks.

In the next few days, a criminal gang which may have stolen as much as £200m a year from the Government through fake benefit claims is due to be sentenced.

Galina Nikolova, 38, her boyfriend Stoyan Stoyanov, 27, Tsvetka Todorova, 52, Gyunesh Ali, 33 and Patritsia Paneva, 26, were arrested in London on May 5, 2021.

They have all admitted fraud and money laundering offences dating between October 2016 and May 2021 and will be sentenced in the coming days. The gangsters are believed to have personally raked in as much as £54 million from their scam.

Here Express.co.uk lists a roll call of some of Britain's biggest benefits cheats who have been convicted over the past few years.

Ethel McGill

Amateur actress McGill persuaded a friend to pretend to be her dead dad in a benefit scam totalling £740,000. McGill, from Runcorn, Cheshire, claimed her father Robert Dennison's war pension and benefits after he died in 2004.

She admitted fraud and was jailed for five years and 10 months at Liverpool Crown Court in July 2019.

The pensioner had feigned dementia and claimed she needed a wheelchair during her trial, but Judge Steven Everett told her nobody believed she was ill and she had been putting on an act for years.

She even asked to friend to lie in bed, pretending to be her dad when officials visited.

He told McGill she had sullied her dad's name and displayed "breathtaking dishonesty". McGill pleaded guilty to 14 counts, including conspiracy to commit fraud.

Her defence lawyer asked the judge to consider a shorter sentence, arguing McGill hadn't lived a lavish lifestyle, but Everett said a message had to be sent that if you steal from the public purse, imprisonment is "inevitable" and a "substantial" sentence had to be passed.

Santino Laskowski

Laskowski was part of an organised crime gang whose members committed £385,000 in benefit fraud between February and October 2020.

He was sentenced along with Ali Tariq, of Newham, London, Karolina Zmijewska, of Enfield, London, Polish resident Monika Gorska and Edyta Gorska, also a resident of Poland.

The gang stole £300,000 from the Department for Work and Pensions and £85,000 from a bank in Barking.

Laskowski attempted to open an account at a bank in Barking using someone else's credentials and a fraudulently obtained utility bill.

He was arrested at the bank, and his mobile phone was examined. It held details of fraudulently opened bank accounts in other people's names as well as messages between Laskowski and Tariq exchanging fraudulent bank account information.

Tariq later visited a bank in Queen Victoria Street with a Polish man in a bid to fraudulently open a bank account using the male's details.

He was arrested and officers discovered the Polish man had been coerced into opening an account for Tariq to commit fraud.

Bank worker Zmijewska was arrested on suspicion of committing fraud on the same day, with the bank identifying accounts she had opened that matched those in Laskowski's phone messages.

Zmijewska said she opened the fraudulent bank accounts for Monika Gorska and denied wrongdoing. Monika Gorska and her accomplice sister, Edyta, tried to flee the UK to Poland.

Evidence showed the sisters were exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic by fraudulently opening Universal Credit accounts in the names of Polish nationals. The DWP identified £300,000 had been fraudulently paid to account holders.

Laskowski was sentenced to two years and four months for conspiracy to defraud the UK banking industry. Tariq was sentenced to two years, suspended for two years, for conspiracy to commit fraud.

Zmijewska received an 18-month prison sentence for conspiracy to commit fraud. Monika Gorska was sentenced to two and a half years for conspiracy to commit fraud and conspiracy to supply articles for use in fraud. Edyta Gorska was sentenced to two years for committing money laundering offences.

Ali Bana Mohammed

Mohammed faked the identities of 200 children to cheat taxpayers out of £1.7m. He enlisted the help of friends and family to help him submit bogus claims under some 70 different names.

The claims made out the adult was caring for children and was entitled to child benefits and tax credits. He admitted 29 fraud offences and was sentenced to three and a half years in 2022.

In the same year, six of his accomplices received jail sentences amounting to over 13 years, with one seeing his sentence suspended.

Liverpool Crown Court later ordered Mohammed to repay more than £2m under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Neil Filer

DWP Secretary Mel Stride likened Filer to Little Britain's Andy Pipkin, who pretends to be disabled.

Filer told the DWP he suffered from diabetes, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and weakness in his right side after a heart attack.

But on social media, he posted photos from an action-packed holiday in Florida, with one showing him on a 90ft slide at a waterpark and on a roller-coaster.

DWP investigators rumbled him following a tip-off. He pleaded guilty to a single count of fraud, amounting to £29,245. Filer was jailed for 11 months in May 2023.