Jailed Breast Op Benefits Cheat
09 MARCH 2012
Benefits cheat who faked his own death and used handouts to pay for wife’s breast operation is jailed
Couple claimed benefits despite owning five properties in London and sending their children to private school
But when Stephen Kellaway feared police were onto them, the pair cooked up a plan
It involved him hiding out and wife Nelli collecting £1.7m in life insurance
They were eventually caught when he was found sleeping rough in Bangkok airport
By Tom Kelly
A benefits cheat who used handouts to pay for his wife’s breast enlargements then faked his own death to escape justice was finally locked up yesterday.
Psychologist Stephen Kellaway was caught after the Mail tracked him down to Thailand.
He had been living under an assumed name after swindling £43,000 in housing and council tax benefits.
Family holiday: Stephen and Nelli Kellaway during their trip to Russia
Kellaway faked his death during a family holiday to Russia, where his wife had breast enlargement surgery.
He bribed a Moscow mortuary worker with a bottle of vodka to place his passport on a dead tramp and got his wife to identify the body as his.
He later fled to Bangkok using a false passport in the name of a boy who had died, and lived off the rental income from his £1million London property portfolio.
The father of two planned to bring his family out to Thailand to live with him by cashing in three life insurance policies worth £1.7million.
However his time on the run came to an end when the Mail discovered he was alive and confronted him.
Caught on camera: Stephen Kellaway, pictured in Bangkok, faked his own death while visiting Russia with his wife Nelli before fleeing to Thailand
Thai authorities later deported the 54-year-old back to Britain where he admitted a string of benefits fraud and false documentation offences.
Yesterday, jailing him for two years and eight months at Croydon Crown Court, Judge Shani Barnes said he had carried out a ‘cynical and selfish plan’.
She said: ‘It struck at the very heart of the benefits system. People such as yourself who criminally steal from those who rely on benefits and from the taxpayers who pay for them, undermine that system and demolish its credibility.’
Hammersmith and Fulham Council, which brought the prosecution, praised the Mail for helping to bring Kellaway to justice, describing our role as ‘British investigative journalism at its very best.’
Kellaway slept rough in the lounge of Bangkok Airport, while his wife went home from Russia to claim his life insurance
Kellaway began planning his scam in 2008 after being inspired by the case of fraudster John Darwin, who fled to Panama after supposedly dying in a canoe accident.
Kellaway at one point earned £100,000 a year from his counselling service in West London. He and his Russian-born wife Nelli, 42, owned five houses and flats which the court heard made money in ‘large measures’ through rent and rising house prices.
But to help pay their multiple mortgages and children’s school fees, they also fraudulently claimed housing benefit on their portfolio.
Realising the net was closing in on them, they went on holiday to Russia, where Mrs Kellaway had her breast operation. The ‘widow’ was arrested as she returned to London in November 2008 carrying an urn which she claimed contained Kellaway’s ashes and his three life insurance policies.
She later convinced a court that her ‘abusive’ husband had forced her into the fraud and escaped with a suspended sentence. Meanwhile Kellaway used the birth certificate of a seven-year-old from Belfast who died of heart problems to get an Irish passport.
The fraudulent death certificate of Stephen Kellaway, who faked his death to escape jail for his part in a fraud worth £43,000
He returned to the UK under his new identity, and was spotted several times visiting his parents in Brighton, before jetting off to Sri Lanka and then to Thailand.
In Bangkok, he lived on rental income he received from the UK for several months before he was mugged and lost his false passport – meaning he had no identification to collect his payments.
When the Mail caught up with him last summer he was living rough at the city’s airport and begging for food. He admitted his fraud, explaining: ‘Parts of my life on the run were very James Bond, but parts were also very squalid, and I wouldn’t recommend what I have done.’
Kellaway admitted three counts of benefit fraud and possession and use of a false identification document yesterday.
Judge Barnes described his scam and fake death as ‘well thought out and professional.’ She said: ‘You planned it in a way that was persistent and intelligent. You used a false identification to cynically hide your real identification from the police and avoid detection for your abject dishonesty.
‘What a sorry mess this all is.’