A postgrad biomedical student already jailed for stalking a judge will spend a further three years in prison for housing benefit fraud, after ripping off dozens of councils, a Kingston court heard.

Javed Shaikh, 44, claimed £313,043 from 32 authorities, making 51 successful benefit applications using the names and personal details of nine real people without their knowledge.

Shaikh used fake documents such as birth certificates, tenancy agreements, benefit letters and bank statements when making the bogus claims.

The money was paid into a number of bank accounts controlled by Shaikh, who was found to have had three bank cards in different names.

A safety deposit box held in his name was searched and contained £200,000 in cash. He also filed claims under his own name.

He had already been sentenced to eight years in jail after being found guilty of stalking a judge online in 2024 but will remain behind bars for longer after he pleaded guilty to seven counts of fraud by false representation between 2015 and 2022 at Kingston Crown Court.

The duped councils which paid Shaikh the most money were: Barnet (£44,471), Brent (£41,244), Islington (£28,242), Lambeth (£25,312), Hackney (£24,715), Ealing, (£24,362), and Colchester (£22,806).

The seven authorities accounted for £211,152; almost 70 per cent of the overall total. During his arrest, Shaikh was found carrying £13,500 in cash in his backpack.

Rose-Marie Franton from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said: "Javed Shaikh hijacked the identities of real people so he could cheat taxpayers out of money intended for those who really needed it to pay their rent.

"His fraud extended to 32 councils over a seven-year period and scammed them out of £313,000.

"Thanks to the hard work of DWP investigators, the applications and money was traced back to Shaikh. The CPS will now take him back to court to begin confiscation proceedings and recover the money that Shaikh stole."

Prosecution evidence included cashpoint CCTV footage of Shaikh withdrawing money from accounts into which housing benefit had been paid.

His mobile phone and laptop also had documents which had been submitted in support of the fraudulent applications.

The prosecution argued that the applications were clearly false because Shaikh reused names and aspects of personal details to make applications to different local authorities at around the same time.

The individuals could not genuinely have had a tenancy in one area at the same time as having a tenancy in another.

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