Britain’s biggest ever benefit fraudsters revealed as Bulgarian gang who swiped £54m to spend on luxury bling

BRITAIN’S biggest ever benefit fraudsters cheated the taxpayer out of almost £54million and spent it on luxury cars, designer clothes, and flashy watches.

A gang of five criminals, originally from Bulgaria, made more than 6000 false claims for public cash from their benefit fraud factories in north London.

Gyunesh Ali, Patritsia Paneva, Stoyan Stoyanov, Tsvetva Todorova, and Galina Nikolov lived a life of luxury on the £53,901,959.82 Universal Credit which they stole through their sophisticated scheme.

Over a four and a half year period, the group operated on an industrial scale out of the back of three corner shops in Wood Green with a library of fake identities used to make fraudulent claims.

Each claim was allocated a different mobile number and had an array of fake documents including tenancy agreements, counterfeit payslips, and forged letters from GPs, landlords, and employees.

If a claim was rejected they would try again until it was accepted.

Some of the claims were made using real people’s details who would pay the gang to use their identities to make the claims on their behalf.

The Universal Credit was paid into hundreds of different bank accounts and then withdrawn by the crooks at the bank.

Work is ongoing to recover the vast sums of money with some thought to have been spent on property in Bulgaria.

The UK’s biggest ever investigation into benefit fraud was launched when a pattern emerged in the claims with names and addresses repeated.

Cops seized more than 900 digital devices and found £750,000 in cash hidden in a suitcase under a bed when they raided properties and businesses on May 5 2021.

Their assets were frozen after their arrests with cops taking cars including an Audi, designer clothes, jewellery and watches.

Wads of bank notes were found stashed around their homes.

One video, recovered from Ali’s phone, showed him throwing cash onto the floor for an unknown woman to pick up.

Eventually he gets bored of the ‘game’ and throws the whole stack at once.

Following his release under investigation Ali fled the country to Bulgaria and was extradited back to the UK on 25 February 2023 so that he could face justice

One of the addresses used for the scam was a Bulgarian food shop called Antonia Food in Wood Green, north London. 

A picture from Nikolova's Instagram from June 2020 shows her posing behind the counter of the seemingly normal convenience shop.

Nikolova, 38, Stoyanov, 27, Todorova, 52, Ali, 33, and Paneva, 26, pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering related offences at Wood Green crown court for their involvement in a multi-million-pound scam.

They face record prison time when they are sentenced in May.

Ben Reid, specialist prosecutor at the Serious Economic, Organised Crime and International Directorate at the CPS called the case a “very serious attack” on the UK’s benefit system.

He said: “This was an industrial-scale fraud committed by an organised criminal group.

“They carried out a sustained attack on a system designed to support the most vulnerable people in our society and treated it like a cash machine to fund their own lavish lifestyles."

Explaining how the gang got away with the crime for so long, Reid told The Sun: “If you were walking down the road in Wood Green you would see a corner shop and it would appear to be legitimate.

“You would walk in through the front door and there would be shelves of food and drink.

“But as you walked through to the back you would find further rooms where there were desks and computers.

“It was from those rooms that the gang was submitting thousands of false claims for Universal Credit to the Department of Work and Pensions supported by false documents such as leases, employment contracts, that kind of thing.”

In November 2021, after the gang were arrested, the DWP introduced an improved verification process for Universal Credit claims.

Secretary of State for the Department for Work and Pensions, Mel Stride MP, said: “I am immensely proud of DWP investigators’ work, in collaboration with the Crown Prosecution Service, to take down this organised crime group.

“Building on our success in preventing £18 billion going into the wrong hands in 2022/23, these convictions underline our commitment to protecting taxpayers’ money. It is only right and fair that we bring those stealing from the public purse to justice.”

Minister responsible for tackling benefit fraud, Paul Maynard MP, added: “Our investigators are working tirelessly to catch benefit cheats and this case builds upon our plan to save £1.3 billion on fraud and error.

“At the same time, our Fraud Plan will help us implement a long-term strategy to minimise fraud and error and ensure value and fairness for the taxpayer.”