An interesting report in London's Evening Standard, about a Palestinian asylum seeker who lived rent free in a council flat while apparently earning £75,000 a year as a carpenter and builder.
Fahd El-Hajj pocketed £43,500 in a four-year swindle at the taxpayers' expense after moving to Britain from Palestine. He arrived in Britain in 1999 and in January 2004 made a bogus claim for housing benefit at his home in Shoot Up Hill, Camden, on the grounds that he had no money.
A month later he was refused asylum but failed to declare his position to the authorities because it would have meant losing the handouts. Despite computer databases, the swindle went undetected until September 2007, when he moved out and a policeman became the new tenant - and he was only caught because the officer discovered £10,500 cash in brown envelopes stuffed inside a drawer which El-Hajj had completely forgotten about! It then emerged around £150,000 had passed through several of his bank accounts in just two years. Do carpenters and bulders have "several bank account" and forget about £10,000 in notes?
El-Hajj decided to admit five counts of false accounting and was remanded in custody before he is sentenced later this month.
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