The benefits cheats who built hotel with YOUR £400,000

A gang of African asylum seekers pocketed £400,000 in a benefits scam - then used the cash to start building a hotel back home.

The four Angolans stole giro cheques and laundered them through fake bank accounts.

Demosthenes Barroso, 34, Paulo Alexandre, 38, Manuel Baltazar, 37, and Mizel Kinangh, 25 all face jail and extradition after being exposed in an 18-month investigation codenamed Operation Wasm.

Fraud officers have so far linked £243,000 of stolen cash to the men, although the true figure is believed to be twice that amount.

The gang, who were arrested in a series of raids, will appear at Oxford Crown Court for sentence on October 15 after pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud the Department of Works and Pensions.

At the home of Barroso, police found detailed blueprints of a hotel he and the gang were planning to build in Angola with the proceeds of their swindle.

Construction work had begun on the site. Police even found photos of Barroso - who claimed income support, disability living allowance, housing benefits and child tax credits - working on the site of the hotel.

The swindle came to light in May 2005 when fraud investigators discovered a fake giro, which was traced to Barroso, who had fled war-torn Angola to live in Oxford.

In a joint operation involving the Department of Works and Pensions, police and customs, investigators quickly worked out the cheque had been stolen from a London sorting office.

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Alexandre, Kinangh and Baltazar had set up homes in Birmingham and Oxford after also coming to England to seek asylum.

Both Barroso and Alexandre claimed to have been soldiers in the Angolan civil war, and said on their asylum applications they had no option but to flee the country.

But rather than find work, the gang altered giros to fit 17 fake identities and began laundering the cash through 40 different bank accounts.

Barroso and his three accomplices were seen at various cashpoints across the West Midlands withdrawing the laundered money.

Checks with financial institutions then linked their different identities with their addresses in Birmingham, Oxford, Plymouth and London - and identical handwriting was also spotted on many of the giros.

Police raids on the Midlands homes of the gang also found false IDs and passports which proved they made frequent trips back to their homeland.

Midlands MEP Mike Nattrass criticised the systematic abuse of the benefits system by asylum seekers.

He said: "This is yet another example of how our porous borders are letting down every law-abiding person in this country.

"Our open-door policy is a disaster.

"People like these gang members see our country as a soft touch and it's no coincidence that they end up here, as they know exactly what they're doing.

"We have to have an intelligent debate on immigration because this country is already overcrowded.

"You only have to look at the state of our roads and the lack of houses to prove that.

"This is a space, not a race issue, and we should be very particular about the kind of people we allow into this country."