A property businesswoman who was also a buy-to-let landlord with a £2.6m property empire that netted her £150,000 rent in year, has been jailed for 12 months for benefits fraud.
Seema Bassi, 49, of Ilford, Essex, last year became director of Overcliffe Residents Company, set up to manage properties on a fee or contract basis.
She had built up a personal portfolio of 26 properties, but claimed benefits for over a decade, saying she was a jobless single mother.
She bought her first property in 1994 and started claiming benefits three years later.
Altogether, she fleeced the taxpayer of nearly £74,000 – £67,819 in housing benefit and £6,118 in council tax benefits.
Her portfolio included 14 flats and three houses in Gravesend, a house in Canterbury, three flats in Herne Bay, a terrace in Greenhithe, and a house in Hartlepool, Cleveland.
To obtain mortgages, she told lenders that she worked for a property firm, earning £69,200.
Some of the properties were leased to Gravesham Council in Kent for asylum seekers.
Bassi had denied fraud, but was convicted of five counts after a trial earlier this year, and has now been sentenced.
********!
Once again – out in 5 months and will get on with her life.
Powers should be in place to commandeer her rents to pay back every single penny plus costs!
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I presented DWP, CLG, OFT and HMRC with a simple means to identify cases like this (she isn't the only one by a long stretch of imagination) along with all the other undesirables who are profiting and laundering cash through rented property portfolios. Because there is no cohesive thinking between the multiple departments Benefits Fraud, Tax evasion and money laundering will continue.
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Unless you own a car!
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