Turkish pensioner who blagged a council house and £170k in benefits by pretending to be Scottish despite owning a string of properties in her home country is jailed
Catherine Maloney conned the DWP for a decade
A PENSIONER faked being Scottish to blag a council house and £177,000 in benefits - despite being from TURKEY.
Fraudster Catherine Maloney was jailed for two years and six months today after her bizarre con was exposed.
The Turk, who claims to be 62 and unable to speak English, was told she now faces deportation after conning the DWP for a decade.
Jailing her, Judge Owen Davies QC said: "Catherine Maloney, I am addressing you through an interpreter, although I know perfectly well you can understand English.
"You've been conning well-meaning people in this country for the last 10 years- there's a question over whether you entered here lawfully at all or in a fake passport.
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";In your case, this was perpetrated from the beginning as a fraud.
"You managed to con a number of people, saying that you were in possession of identity that meant you were entitled to this money.
"I have looked at the evidence to suggest you are Catherine Maloney and I totally reject that and absolutely no amount of repetition will make me believe the lie you've been living for the last 10 years."
Taxpayers have been paying for the wheelchair-bound Turk to live in a psychiatric ward since her conviction, but doctors say she has no symptoms of psychotic illness.
Her daughter revealed to probation officers she is mobile and lives independently - and also speaks good English.
An arrest warrant had to be issued when Maloney refused to leave the ward for sentencing this week.
Len Furlong, for Maloney, said:"She has a number of ailments which make her vulnerable - she's had cancer, she has problems with her arm, she's in a wheelchair.
"All these ailments mean she would find it hard to cope with imprisonment."
The whole idea that you were entitled to be considered a British citizen is a farce and has always been a farce. Even now you don't accept that you've done wrong.
Judge Owen Davies QC
Maloney first applied for asylum in the UK in 2002 under her Turkish name Katrin Butun.
But when her application was rejected, she claimed to remember being born Scotland - and produced a birth certificate in the name of Catherine Lynch - believed to be an Irish ex-pat.
She later changed her name by deed poll to Catherine Bridget Maloney and applied for a UK passport.
Maloney successfully applied for a council house on Bramley Hill, South Croydon, and pocketed £177,000 in income support allowance, housing benefit, council tax benefit and disability living allowance between April 2004 and July 2015.
She was arrested following an investigation by the Department of Work and Pensions and was convicted of three counts of dishonest representation to obtain a benefit in August last year.
Maloney refused to give evidence at her trial and claimed not to be able to pay back any of the money despite owning three properties in Bodrum, Turkey.
Judge Davies added: "The whole idea that you were entitled to be considered a British citizen is a farce and has always been a farce.
"Even now you don't accept that you've done wrong.
"There's evidence to suggest that you have at least an equitable share in property in Turkey and you have given a timetable and you have to give evidence on the existence or non-existence of that property.
"But I sentence you on the basis you are not able to repair some of the financial damage you've wreaked on the public services and not a penny has been paid back of the money in question."
Maloney, formerly of Bramley Hill, South Croydon, was jailed for two years and six months for three counts of benefit fraud.
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