WOMAN STOLE DEAD CHILD'S IDENTITY AND PRETENDED TO BE A VICAR TO ILLEGALLY CLAIM £250,000 IN BENEFITS OVER 20 YEARS

A fraudster stole a dead child's identity and pretended to be a vicar to claim £250,000 in benefits she was not entitled to. 

Yvonne Doyle conned the Department of Work and Pensions and Milton Keynes Council for 20 years and has been ordered to pay back £107,000 by a judge at Reading Crown Court. 

The 64-year-old was jailed for seven years in December after stealing a dead four-year-old's identity, using the name of Carol Ann Naylor, who died in 1951. 

She also posed as a vicar named Reverend Naylor and took on the alias of Bridgette Meally, who died in 1999, to make the claims.

Yvonne Doyle, who has been ordered to pay back £107,000 after illegally claiming £250,000 in benefits she was not entitled to

The 64-year-old was jailed for seven years in December after stealing a dead four-year-old's identity, using the name of Carol Ann Naylor, who died in 1951

She was convicted of five counts of possession of an identity document, (an improperly obtained UK/Irish driving licence/passport) with intent, four counts of obtaining services by deception, one count of obtaining a money transfer by deception and eight counts of benefit frauds against the DWP and Milton Keynes Council, totalling £265,388 between 1990 and 2010.

Today the mother-of-two, from Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, was ordered to repay £107,584 from her husband’s bank account within six months or serve an extra two years imprisonment. 

All the money recovered will be returned to the victims as compensation.

During her trial, the court heard that Doyle refused to appear before magistrates at an earlier hearing in January 2011, instead sending a letter claiming she was subject to a fatwa which had led to the 'trumped-up' charges against her.

She claimed the charges against her were fabricated and wrote: 'The alleged amounts have been manufactured and this was done in order to give the false appearance of high value crime.'

Doyle fled South Africa in the 1980s after being accused of dumping a swastika-emblazoned pig’s head on the steps of a Synagogue.

The con-artist, who was then using then going by the name Yvonne Malone, also faced a charge of attempted murder in 1988 after she allegedly shot and wounded a gardener at her property in Durban.

The conwoman, then 38, failed to appear before a South African Court and was believed by the authorities to have fled the country.

Doyle was branded 'clever, manipulative, bold and wholly dishonest' by prosecutors during her trial.

Detective Inspector Gavin Tyrrell, from Thames Valley Police, said: 'The Thames Valley Police Asset Recovery Team is determined to remove assets from convicted criminals who benefit from their crime. 

'This case shows that anyone convicted of acquisitive crimes will be pursued for their assets irrespective of where they are held.

'This confiscation legislation is powerful legislation for law enforcement agencies that where criminal assets are identified they can be used to repay victims of crime and we will continue to use it in this way.'