Yvonne Doyle has been jailed for seven years
after being found guilty of stealing a dead child's identity in order to
falsely claim £250,000 in benefits
A mother of two stole a dead child’s identity and posed as a vicar as part of a £265,000 benefits swindle.
Over 20 years, Yvonne Doyle fraudulently obtained birth and marriage certificates for people both alive and dead.
The woman used them to apply for driving licences, passports and national
insurance numbers to claim state handouts at a variety of addresses.
Brazen
Doyle, 63, who came to this country in 1988 after being accused of dumping a swastika-emblazoned pig’s head on the steps of a Synagogue in South Africa claimed carer’s allowance under one name.
She then used a
second alias to grab disability benefits as the person supposedly being
cared for.
Reading Crown
Court, where Doyle was jailed for seven years on Thursday, heard that
one of the identities she hijacked was that of Carol Ann Naylor, who
died at the age of four in 1951.
She
used the same surname to pose as a vicar called Rev Naylor, and also
stole the identity of a woman called Bridgette Meally, who died in 1999,
to claim £10,000 in carer’s allowances.
In
total, Doyle swindled £173,959 from the Department of Work and
Pensions, £39,149 from Milton Keynes Council, and a further £52,279
from financial institutions, netting more than £265,000.
Among the handouts she falsely claimed were council tax and housing benefit, disability living allowance and carers’ allowance.
Her
trial was told the ‘clever, manipulative, bold and wholly dishonest’
woman also claimed to be disabled and in need of a wheelchair or
crutches to move about.
But
neighbours regularly saw her walking to the shops and gardening. Doyle
was arrested in December 2009 after a routine financial audit by DWP
investigators.
Police then
found a suitcase dubbed a ‘fraudster’s tool kit’ containing fake
identification documents when they raided her daughter’s home.
Tim
Naylor, prosecuting, said: ‘This was a professionally planned fraud.
'
Identity documents were obtained in a
number of different names and identities and this was carried out over a
significant period of time.'
Jurors
refused to believe Doyle’s claims that the charges were ‘trumped up’
and linked to a ‘fatwa’ placed on her by South Africa’s Chief Rabbi.
In a letter she sent while refusing to appear before magistrates in 2011, the fraudster said: 'The alleged amounts have been manufactured and this was done in order to give the false appearance of high value crime.'
Doyle added: 'I do not believe I will
get a fair trial due to the involvement of Jews and Freemasons. In 1988 a
fatwa, for want of a better word, was declared on me by the chief Rabbi
of South Africa.'
Following
the case, it was revealed that during the Eighties she spent three years in South Africa
but fled after being accused of the attempted murder of a
gardener and an anti-Semitic attack.
Doyle - who attended court in a wheelchair
despite witnesses saying they had seen her gardening without help - had
claimed the charges were part of a 'fatwa' issued by the chief Rabbi of
her native South Africa
Doyle fled South Africa in 1988 after being accused of dumping a swastika-emblazoned pig’s head on the steps of a Synagogue.
The
con-artist, who was then going by the name Yvonne Malone, also evaded a
charge of attempted murder in that same year after she shot and wounded
a gardener at her property in Durban.
A
South African newspaper reported that in April 1988 worshippers at the
Great Synagogue and Jewish Club on Durban’s beachfront found a pig’s
head, decorated with a swastika on the forehead and a Star of David on
each ear, on the front steps.
An
identical pig’s head was also found by members of the congregation at
the rear of the property. Doyle, who owned a steak house, was arrested
after the butcher who sold her the heads contacted police.
She tried to escape being charged by
using another fake name to ring a local newspaper and claim she had seen
a group of Neo-Nazis march up to the steps and dump the heads.
The
report revealed that Doyle also faced a charge of attempted murder, and
was alleged to have shot and wounded a gardener at the duplex where she
lived.
The conwoman,
then 38, failed to appear before a South African Court and was believed
by the authorities to have fled the country.
Doyle fled to Ireland following her
arrest in the UK for her latest offences and had to be extradited back
to this country to face trial.
Jailing
her at Reading Crown Court today, Judge Angela Morris said: 'You
deceived the Department of Work and Pensions, Milton Keynes Council and
other financial institutions into providing you with State benefits and
other credit facilities that you were not entitled to and never would
have received had those institutions known the truth about your true
identity or the level of your disability.
'The result was that by fraudulent means you acquired substantial public and private money that you were not entitled to.'
Doyle,
of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, sat in a wheelchair sobbing as she
was sentenced for a total of 18 charges between 1990 and 2010.
The
hearing, which had been delayed for six months after she sacked her
legal team, was told she would be appealing against her conviction.
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