Telford mother, 39, jailed for £26,000 training fund fraud
A mother from Telford who used false immigration documents to claim more than £26,000 to train as a nurse has been jailed for eight months.
Leticia Awuku, 39, claimed £26,330.75 from the NHS student bursary by saying she had indefinite leave to remain in the UK.
Awuku, of Highway View, Arleston, is a Ghanaian national and was not entitled to the money.
She claimed she was given a Home Office letter granting her leave to remain and stamps in her passport by her father.
Awuku was convicted of fraud at Shrewsbury Crown Court following a trial last month after the prosecution argued that she would have or should have known the documents were not legitimate when they were passed to her.
The court heard Awuku came to the UK in the 1990s, but the authorities had no record of her arrival. Her father died in 2010.
She studied full time between 2007 and 2011 at Kingston University and completed a diploma in nursing, but was arrested in May 2012 by enforcement officers on suspicion of illegally entering the country.
She had told the jury that she did what she was told because she had respected and trusted her father, and was “terrified of him” because he was an overbearing man.
Mr Robin Morgan, defending, said that Awuku’s intention had always been to better herself and that she carried out her nursing course with the aim of working in the NHS.
He said she had lost her job as a cleaner as a result of the case, was not entitled to benefits and that her partner worked in a supermarket. He urged Judge Jonathan Gosling to give her a community order including “hefty” unpaid work.
Willing
But Judge Gosling told Awuku: “You were a willing and prime mover in gaining the bursary. There are no aggravating factors. The only mitigating factor is that you are of good character.
“But even now you do not accept your guilt. I’m afraid the only sentence is one of immediate imprisonment for eight months of which you must serve up to half.”
Awuku appeared stunned when the sentence was announced and wept as she was led from the dock to the cells.
“You had £26,330 conditional on you being a resident of this country with indefinite leave to remain," Judge Gosling said,.
"You had no such leave and you didn’t question it. I could not be certain, nor could the jury, of who forged the document, but I am in no doubt at all that you were a willing accomplice and you were determined to falsify your immigration status.
“The fraud was significant. The forger had some skill and the letter and passport stamps were high quality forgeries that an expert had to discern.”
“Your father may have been overbearing, but he had no interest in the bursary. The application was your work and until you were discovered you benefited from it. The fraud only stopped when it was discovered. The NHS lost a good deal of money from it,” he added.
