A South African woman who carried out €96,000 of social welfare fraud in Ireland using a fake passport, was able to continue to apply for welfare payments once her real identity was established.
Dominique Mokoena came to Ireland from South African twenty years under a three-month South African tourist visa using her real identity.
She then went to live in Britain, but returned to Ireland in 2006 and claimed asylum under a false name, saying she was from Zimbabwe.
“When a passport was required as part of this application she obtained a false one which was accepted by the authorities. She applied for social welfare between 2013 and 2019 under this false identity,” Echo Live reports.
The social welfare payments including one-parent family, rent supplement, and child benefit payments. Mokoena’s defence barrister argued that the woman would have been entitled to some payments as she had Irish-born children.
All payments were stopped but she was able to apply for social welfare once her correct identity with South African passport was established as genuine.
The illegality of her obtaining payments for the six-year period arose out of the fact that her documentation was false at that time and she may have had no legal status in the country.
the Echo Live reported.
The 41-year old women now lives in Clondulane, Fermoy, County Cork. She received a three-year suspended sentence for the social welfare fraud at Cork Circuit Criminal Court
The sample charges presented by an Garda Síochána amounted to almost €100,000 over the four year period.
Ms Mokoena had received exceptional needs payment, child benefit, basic supplementary allowance, rent supplement and back to school allowances, the court heard.
The payments were stopped when it was discovered that her identity was false, but once it had been established her South African passport was genuine, she was able to apply for welfare benefits once again.