Mother-of-four jailed for two years for €100,000 social welfare fraud
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Declan Brennan
January 25 2022 5:25 PM
A mother-of-four who fraudulently claimed more than €100,000 in child welfare and single parent benefits has been jailed for two years.
Lawyers for Janet Agbontaen (55) told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court that she was under the control of a domineering and violent husband when she committed the thefts and frauds.
The court heard when the Nigerian native arrived in Dublin Airport in April 2001 heavily pregnant and under a false identity, she claimed to be from Sierra Leone and sought asylum.
Five months later she made a second claim of asylum under her real identity and claimed she had arrived in Ireland the day before.
For the next eight years she lived here under two identities, one of which was fake. Under the false identity she fraudulently claimed around €55,000 in child benefit claims, €3,000 in early childcare allowance, and around €83,700 in one parent family payments.
In 2002 she took a judicial review against a deportation order relating to her and her children under the false identities. Her sworn statements to the High Court are the basis for charges of perjury or perverting the course of justice.
Lorcan Staines SC, prosecuting, told the court that because of the varyingly false accounts of her children she gave in her application to stay here, the Minister was unknowingly seeking to deport an Irish citizen.
