A SOCIALITE and serial fraudster has been sent back to jail for swindling Hammersmith and Fulham Council out of £17,500.
Farah Damji invented a rich husband, a profitable business and a £96,000 salary so she could rent two expensive flats in Shepherd's Bush and Fulham, weeks after being released from prison in 2007.
A few months later the 43-year-old pretended her fake husband had left her and used forged documents to persuade officials she needed housing and council tax benefits.
The mother-of-two - daughter of property tycoon Amir Damji - claimed she needed the state handouts to support her children, who were living in South Africa with her family.
Damji persuaded a lettings agent to hand over the keys to a £1,500-a-month flat in Loftus Road, Shepherd's Bush, for which she falsely claimed £17,500 in benefits, and left the landlord £7,600 out of pocket by failing to pay rent.
She also tried to sub-let the flat for £50 a week more than she was being charged, but was caught when the estate agent noticed her advert on the Gumtree website.
Damji was evicted in 2008, but used a similar scam to rent another flat in Kilmaine Road, Fulham, under a false name.
Damji, now of Carlisle Place, Westminster, admitted fraud at Blackfriars Crown Court on Monday, but claimed to have done it as a 'heartfelt attempt to find a suitable home for her two young children'.
Jailing her for 15 months, Judge Aiden Marron said hers was a case 'dripping with dis-honesty at every conceivable corner'.
He said: "You forged documents, you forged signatures and you supported your activity with false documentation.
"You pretended to be someone you were not, you pleaded being virtually penniless in relation to housing benefit and you maintained your children were living with you when they weren't."
He added: "You manipulated bank statements so money came to you rather than landlords and every time your dishonesty might be exposed you reacted with more dishonestly."
The false claims were the latest in a string of offences dating back to 1995, when Damji was first jailed for fraud in New York.
She returned to the UK and later went on a £50,000 spree using stolen credit cards, including those of her nanny, another former employee and a friend.
Damji, who published her autobiography Try Me last summer - was later convicted of perverting the course of justice when she posed as a member of the Crown Prosecution Service to try to stop witnesses giving evidence against her.
