Thread: 53-year-old Brit, who faked own death, sleeping rough on Thai airport bench

'I've been living a lie for too long': The 53-year-old British father who faked his own death after wife's breast op in Moscow found sleeping rough on Thai airport bench | Mail Online

'I've been living a lie for too long': The 53-year-old British father who faked his own death after wife's breast op in Moscow found sleeping rough on Thai airport bench

By Tom Kelly

Last updated at 11:31 PM on 29th July 2011


On the run: Stephen Kellaway in Bangkok, where he has lived since faking his own death to avoid justice

Weaving his way along a Bangkok street, Stephen Kellaway looks like just another ageing hippie enjoying the relaxed Thai lifestyle.

In fact, he is a middle-class British psychologist who officially died almost two years ago.

The 53-year-old father of two faked his death during a family trip to Moscow, where his wife had breast enlargement surgery, to avoid jail for swindling £50,000 benefits.

Since then he has been living in Asia, mainly on the proceeds of the £1million property empire the couple built up in London.

The Daily Mail tracked him down to Bangkok, where he was sleeping rough after his payments from the UK had been temporarily halted.

There, he admitted: 'I've been lying about who I am for too long. It is a life of constant anxiety and uncertainty.'

The son of an engineer, Kellaway met his third wife, Nelli, in a pub during the mid-1990s when he was running a counselling service in West London. They have a daughter and son aged 11 and nine, who were sent to private school.

Kellaway earned £100,000 a year from his practice. He and Nelli, now 42, bought six houses and flats in the South East. To help pay their multiple mortgages and school fees, they fraudulently claimed housing benefit on their property portfolio.

Realising the police were closing in, they went on holiday with their children to Russia, where Nelli had her breast operation – and her husband faked his death by bribing a mortuary worker to place his passport on the body of a tramp.

Nelli returned to London with an urn which she said contained Kellaway's ashes. Facing court for the fraud, she convinced a jury that her 'abusive' husband had forced her into it and escaped with a suspended sentence.

Meanwhile Kellaway was travelling the world on a false passport which he secured using the birth certificate of a dead child – a ruse inspired by the Frederick Forsyth thriller The Day Of The Jackal.

As the Mail reported last year, he was spotted several times back in England, where he visited his parents in Brighton. But when we caught up with him, he was chain smoking 50p-a-packet local cigarettes at Bangkok airport, where he was begging for money and sleeping on benches.

His entire belongings comprised two t-shirts, a pair of combat trousers, a shoulder bag and a filthy pair of flip-flops after the rest of his possessions were stolen. He said he is so terrified of being caught that he does not have a mobile phone and his only communication with home is through a single email account which he shares with his wife in London.

He said: '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.

'I'm sure that within a couple of years of doing the Great Train Robbery, Ronnie Biggs was sick of being a wanted man living abroad. It's not glamorous. You have to associate with undesirables ranging from petty thieves to violent gangsters to get the documentation you require or to help you get in and out of countries.

'I've only been able to speak to my kids a few times since I've been abroad and I miss them terribly.

'I'm also so used to inventing stories about who I am that I have no sense of what reality is any more.'


Penniless: Kellaway sleeping in the lounge of Bangkok Airport. He travelled the world on a false passport which he secured using the birth certificate of a dead child - a ruse inspired by the Frederick Forsyth thriller The Day Of The Jackal

Kellaway began planning his scam in 2008, shortly after the arrest of John Darwin, who faked death by vanishing in a canoe as part of a £680,000 insurance fraud.

'It seemed the answer to my problems,' he said. 'I could escape jail for my benefits fraud, my wife would get a £2million life insurance payout and then I could return and move our family abroad to live off the cash.'

Kellaway used the birth certificate of a boy who died aged seven in Belfast to get a Republic of Ireland passport – as is permitted for those born in Northern Ireland.

He said: 'It's a loophole which, for political reasons with the situation in Ireland, the British will probably never be able to close.

'The wonderful thing is that, once you have done it, you have watertight identification documents.

'The passport had my photo and even had biometrics for my eyes, so when I used it to fly from Gatwick Airport I was fast-tracked through the immigration queue.

'I also used it to get a Lloyds bank account in England and a driver's licence, giving me everything I needed to exist as a new person.'

After returning overland to England he learned that the benefit fraud investigators had seized a laptop and notes containing details from his home of how he planned to use the cash from the life insurance payout, so he felt unable to go ahead with that scam.

From the Mail, January 2010

Despite this he jetted off to Bangkok and lived on rental income he received from the UK.

But things started to go wrong after he was mugged and lost his false passport – meaning he had no official identification to collect his payments.

To survive he acquired a fake master's degree in education and got a job teaching English and science in a school in a remote town in Northern Thailand.

He said: 'It was a very respected job. I wore a shirt and tie, had my own apartment and my own desk in the staffroom.

'I downloaded the lesson plans off the internet and just made it up as I went along, hoping to stay one step ahead of the pupils. None of them had the slightest idea of the reality of who I was.'

When school inspectors discovered he did not have a passport, Kellaway lost his job and had to return to Bangkok, where he began living in the airport.

He has overstayed his tourist visa in Thailand and is terrified of being arrested because he cannot afford the mandatory £500 fine for visa violation.

His worst fear is being thrown in the Bangkok Hilton, nickname for the notorious Bangkwang Prison.

But he now has a copy of the false passport, meaning he can soon resume collecting payments, and has moved into a guest house while he organises a replacement passport which he hopes to use to return to the UK.

He has told friends in Thailand that once back in Europe he will sell a flat in central London and another property he owns in Russia to raise the £400,000 needed to buy a farm near Bordeaux and start a business in truffles and caviar.

With a wry smile he told the Mail: 'I'm not sure whether the move back to Europe will go ahead now that you have caught up with me.

'But, let's face it, the authorities were hopeless at catching me before and will probably be hopeless again, so it might happen.'

If Kellaway returns and is arrested, he is expected to face charges for benefits fraud and faking his death.

Greg Smith, a member of Hammersmith & Fulham Council which was a victim of the scam, said: 'This rogue went to extraordinary lengths to avoid detection. We are now doing everything we can to seize his assets.'



Read more: 'I've been living a lie for too long': The 53-year-old British father who faked his own death after wife's breast op in Moscow found sleeping rough on Thai airport bench | Mail Online

Is this actually an Andrew story? And how different is this to Phone Hacking? Despite the way it's written in the beginning, later on it appears he is unaware that he's telling his story to a reporter or private-eye bottom-feeder. Now you can all say - but he's a cnut and is guilty - which he is. But how so different??
Looks like a case of plying the rogue with booze and getting his story under the pretence of being a similar scumbag. Think about this - how different is this to phone hacking? It's ok because the guy deserves to be caught right? Well..so let's ban this too?

I have been told that a 50k Housing Benefit scam isn't much out of the ordinary. HB pays rent, consider the cost of renting in London. More than likely worth a suspended sentence, especially when accompanied by a 'falling on hard times' wet dream. However, if all those committing benefit fraud went on the run, the population of the UK would be significantly reduced......