Fraud Revealed
A woman, 32 years old, was convicted and jailed for 2 years and 3 months for fraud activities related to Roma Gypsies claiming and receiving benefits with overall value of almost 3 million British pounds. The conviction of the woman just confirms and issue that has been a persistent problem in the UK – the rights of the Roma Gypsies who illegally obtain rights over receiving benefits and actually harm the national budget and money spendings.
Lavinia Olmazu, who was working in a council company as part of a legal and accountancy department, has been a loud proclaimer of the Roma Gypsies rights in the UK. She has been working with many Romanian nationals (over 170) and her job obligations included mainly legal advice for the Romanians and their conditions of stay in the UK.
However, Olmazu involved the Gypsies into a fraudulent scheme of claiming benefits by misleading the authorities in the personal information of the Romanian nationals – thus the 170 Roma Gypsies gained rights over the supporting funds.
On the other hand Olmazu, who is a university graduate with previous clean record and reputation, and her boyfriend Enachi founded a separate company through which they were conducting the fraud issuing documentation related to the claim forms for the benefit funds. The court took an approach estimating the the amount of money that were fraudulently obtained through the benefit scheme and the value of damages Olmazu caused – this is how judge Deborah Taylor issued 2 years and 3 months jail for Lavinia.
This piece of news and recent decisions describe a particular problem that bothers the society and the institutions (a problem that might become more dangerous than the diesel problems with carbon emissions) and the government needs to work closely with public bodies in order to establish what rights should the Roma Gypsies enjoy in the UK and what schemes would be available for them.