Bulgarian woman who stole £54m in UK's biggest benefit fraud pays back just £18,000

A Bulgarian woman who took part in Britain's biggest ever benefits fraud has paid back just £18,000.

Tvetka Todorova, 54, filed thousands of false claims as part of a gang of fraudsters that swindled taxpayers out of £54million.

She made £263,514 from the scam and was jailed for three years in May 2024.

The swindler was released in late 2025 and ordered to repay £101,201.78 at a confiscation order hearing in January.

But Todorova has coughed up just £18,228.14 so far – less than a fifth of what she owes.

She missed a July deadline to repay the money, with interest now accruing on the outstanding sum.

Asked today why she had failed to cough up, Todorova moaned that she was ill and refused to comment.

The swindler was released in late 2025 and ordered to repay £101,201.78 at a confiscation order hearing in January

'I don't want to talk about this,' she told a Daily Mail reporter from her upstairs window.

'With my health condition this is already too much. Nobody can come to the house to bother me with anything.

'There are a lot of cases in the UK, mine has been going on for five years and people are bothering me.'

The Mail revealed in January that Todorova had been able to continue claiming benefits after being released from prison.

She signed on to Universal Credit alongside her husband, who she says receives £1,300 a month.

Following our story, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) launched a review and subsequently announced she would have to repay the benefits she received after leaving jail.

In an earlier interview from her home in Erith, south-east London, Todorova boasted of her taxpayer-funded lifestyle.

'I love it here, it is good and has helped me. I've been back on benefits since December 30,' she said.

'It'll be about £200 a month. I don't have a right to work. My husband gets over £1,000 a month in Universal Credit.'

Her gang raked in more than £54million from Britain's biggest ever benefit fraud

In a separate boast, Todorova insisted UK authorities would struggle to seize her assets because most were held overseas.

She said: 'Our place in London is rented. We have a two-bedroom house in Bulgaria that the prosecution has valued at £90,000 but they can't touch it.

'We are married and the house is in both our names. My husband has no connection to the case.'

Yet she now claims to be 'depressed' and suffering from 'high blood pressure because of the case'.

Todorova and four other Bulgarians – Galina Nikolova, 40, Stoyan Stoyanov, 29, Gyunesh Ali, 36, and Patritsia Paneva, 28 – used false identities to file fake benefits claims between October 2016 and 2021.

As of January this year, all except Ali had been freed from prison and were on immigration bail awaiting deportation.

The gang hijacked 6,000 identities to make claims for Universal Credit and even used the names of children living in Bulgaria as part of the five-year scam.

They set up three 'benefit factories' across London, churning out bogus tenancy agreements, counterfeit payslips and forged letters from landlords, employers and GPs to trick the DWP.

Couple Stoyan Stoyanov and Galina Nikolova were also sent to prison over the scam 

The group was only uncovered after a Bulgarian police officer alerted UK officials to a trend of criminals in the city of Sliven suddenly coming into large sums of cash.

Officials are now said to have recouped about £1million from the gang and are pursuing a further £1million, still only a fraction of the £54million they stole before splashing the cash on luxury cars, designer clothes and flashy watches.

Prosecutor Gareth Munday told a hearing that the sums being sought were what officials could 'realistically trace', with one member of the gang admitting she had moved 'cash overseas'.

Todorova technically faces up to five years in prison if she fails to comply with the confiscation order.