NOS News•today, 1:31 PM
A 45-year-old lawyer has been jailed for 7.5 years in Great Britain for submitting fraudulent applications for residence permits for clients. For example, she tried to illegally use a scheme set up for victims of the fatal Grenfell fire, which killed 72 people in 2017.
Because many illegal immigrants lived in the building, the Ministry of the Interior introduced a leniency scheme at the time so as not to hit them twice. “This was a national tragedy, the ministry is not going to use it to carry out immigration controls,” was the reasoning. Those who registered were allowed to stay for the time being and had the prospect of a permanent permit.
Flora Mendes also tried to use this process for her clients. She listed Grenfell Tower as her place of residence in applications for them, even though they had never lived there. Some of the addresses provided did not even exist. Her victims may not have known that fraud was taking place.
Deadline missed
Mendes came to the fore when an immigration officer noticed that a striking number of applications came in after the deadline in 2018. Investigations revealed that all applications were sent from Mendes’ home town of Luton and sometimes used exactly the same wording.
Surveillance camera footage showed that Mendes had sent the requests:
In the heavy sentence, the judge took into account that Mendes had previously been removed from the bar as a lawyer. She had unlawfully acted as an immigration consultant. Moreover, while she was on bail, she continued to defraud: she charged new clients high fees for applications that were simply free.
“You abused your position of power while these vulnerable people thought they were dealing with a competent person,” the judge ruled in his judgment. “Truly disgraceful.”
