Baroness Scotland's housekeeper jailed

An illegal immigrant who was hired as a housekeeper by the former attorney general was jailed for eight months at the Old Bailey yesterday.

Loloahi Tapui, 27, who had overstayed her student visa by four years, duped Baroness Scotland into hiring her as a housekeeper for £6 an hour after buying a fake visa stamp.

Tapui, a Tongan who lives in Chiswick in west London, was found guilty of fraud at Southwark Crown Court last month. She admitted possessing a passport with a counterfeit visa stamp between 7 June 2006 and 19 September 2009.

She was sentenced to four months for fraud, four months for possessing a false identity stamp, and concurrently one month for overstaying her student visa. She was also ordered to pay £1,600 prosecution costs and defence costs which are still to be calculated.

Tapui, who knew she should have left the UK in February 2005, told a series of "barefaced lies", her trial heard, and convinced Lady Scotland to welcome her into her home in January last year. She sold her story to The Mail on Sunday for £95,000. Lady Scotland was fined £5,000 for failing to take copies of the documents.