This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A woman has been convicted of posing as a survivor of the Grenfell Tower fire to claim money, donations and hotel accommodation meant for the victims.



Joyce Msokeri, 47, told authorities she had escaped the the blaze in west London last June but her husband had died. Msokeri was actually single and living miles away at the time.



Over the next few weeks, she filled a room at a Hilton hotel with donations from charities and individuals, and concocted an elaborate ploy to claim insurance on her fictitious partner’s death, the jury at Southwark crown court in London heard.



She was found guilty of three counts of fraud against the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the Hilton and a number of charities respectively, and a further charge of possessing a false document.

Msokeri was not in court to hear the verdict because she remains in hospital after being admitted on Monday for medical tests.



The judge, Michael Grieve QC, set a sentencing date for 6 April.



He thanked the jury for their “good humour” in the face of Msokeri’s delaying tactics throughout the trial, including regularly feigning illness and claiming to have a disability.

Two relatives of a victim of the fire, whom Msokeri at one point tried to claim was her husband, were sitting in the public gallery as the verdict was read out.



Msokeri, of Sutton, south London, had repeatedly tried to frustrate justice by faking illnesses or a disability, including by using a wheelchair for which she had no medical need, the court heard.

She claimed to have lost her home and husband in the blaze, which killed 71 people, when she presented herself to volunteers at the Westway Centre, set up to help survivors, on 15 June, the day after the fire.

But she was at her flat in Sutton on the night of the fire, and on the following morning, spent an hour on the phone to Sky complaining about being charged £1.50 over an unpaid bill.



She would later claim she had a hoarse voice for more than a week after the blaze due to smoke inhalation, but she could be heard clearly in the recording taken by Sky repeating the words: “It’s disgusting, it’s disgusting.”



Her mobile phone had never been used in the area around Grenfell Tower, location data showed. She used her smartphone with a different sim card inserted to report herself missing, while posing as her sister.

The call was made in Malden, south-west London, and 15 minutes later, Msokeri’s freedom pass was used at a nearby railway station.

Her story was called into question when she was unable to give the number of her flat in the tower, despite claiming to have lived there for five months before the fire.



She also told police her husband appeared in footage recovered from the blaze showing the final moments of two men and two women, even though both men had been identified by their families.