Housing officer who took £20,000 in bribes to help illegal immigrants get council houses as part of £2.4million scam and blew it on exotic holidays is jailed for five years

A housing officer who took a £2,000 backhander every time she processed a fake homelessness claim for illegal immigrants as part of a £2.4million council scam has been jailed.

Trudy Ali-Balogun, 55, of Stratford, east London, abused her role as a £25,000 a year housing officer at Southwark Council to help process 24 bogus homelessness claims.

She was paid a £2,000 bribe for each application she approved and used the money to treat herself to holidays around the world, Inner London Crown Court heard.

Ali-Balogun approved false birth certificates for children who never existed, as well as made-up wage slips, bank statements and fake foreign passports.

She was jailed for five years while fraudsters Biayo Awotiwon, 47, and Adeyemi Oyedele, 48, were given five months each.

Kudiartu Falana, 60, was handed a five month jail sentence suspended for 12 months and ordered to complete 200 hours of community service.

Joseph Olaiya, 53, was sentenced to six months suspended for 12 months and ordered to complete 200 hours of community service.

Their trial was part of the wider investigation known as Operation Bronze which has been running since 2011 and has so far yielded more than 30 convictions.

Ibrahim Bundu, a former homeless housing case worker, was previously jailed at Woolwich Crown Court for processing false homeless housing applications in return for backhanders.