AN ASYLUM seeker is facing possible deportation after admitting an £11,000 benefits fraud at post offices across Cumbria and in other parts of the North West of England.

The prosecution is to ask a judge at Carlisle Crown Court to recommend that Lithoke Bothelanyele, 28, is sent back to the Congo, from where he came nine years ago.

Bothelanyele travelled around the region, cashing forged cheques from benefit books which had been stolen from a postal sorting office in London.

He struck at more than 20 post offices across Cumbria, Lancashire and Greater Manchester in the three weeks before his arrest outside a post office in Carlisle last September.

In Cumbria, he carried out the fraud at post offices at Tebay, Kendal, Kirkby Stephen, Penrith and

Brough.

Bothelanyele, who lives in Seven Sisters Road, Tottenham, North London, was remanded in custody at Carlisle Crown Court after previously pleading guilty to a charge of conspiring to defraud the Department of Work and Pensions.

He will be sentenced next week after the necessary paperwork has been completed relating to the prosecution's application for his deportation.

Prosecuting counsel Tim Evans told the court that, although the relevant documents had been served on Bothelanyele while he was held at Carlisle police station, he had refused to sign a receipt acknowledging that he had been given them.

As a result, he said, the case would have to be delayed while Bothelanyele's legal advisers investigated the matter.

Defence counsel Malcolm Dutchman-Smith said any deportation application would have serious consequences for Bothelanyele, partly because he had a partner and two children living in London

and partly because of the political climate in his own country.

February 14, 2003 09:30