Cleaner conned top legal officer

Loloahi Tapui, who knew she had overstayed her student visa by four years, duped Britain's chief law officer into hiring her as her housekeeper for just 6 per hour.

A jury at Southwark Crown Court in London took less than 90 minutes yesterday to find the 27-year-old Tongan, of Chiswick, west London, guilty of fraud.

She will be sentenced on May 7 for fraud, possessing a false identity document, and for overstaying her student visa, and was bailed until that date and told she would be electronically tagged.

Tapui was cleared by the jury of possessing false identity documents with intent.

The jury heard she should have left the UK in February 2005 and subsequently told a series of "barefaced lies" to convince the Attorney General to welcome her into her Chiswick home in west London as part of her family in January last year.

Lady Scotland, who was fined 5,000 for failing to take copies of the documents which Tapui claimed showed she was entitled to work in the UK, told the court she "bitterly regrets" her mistake to this day.

The row catapulted the 54-year-old Minister, who helped form the law under which she was censured, into the centre of a political controversy which saw one of her key aides resign and her reputation as a reliable and safe pair of hands in the Government tarnished.

Lady Scotland denied she had been so busy with her work she simply assumed Tapui had the right to remain and work in the UK because her husband, Alex Zivancevic, was a lawyer and spoke with an English accent.

"I thought this woman was married to a member of the legal profession," she said. "It never crossed my mind that a lawyer in this country would be married to an illegal immigrant and then pass her off as a cleaner to the Attorney General."

The Minister added that she hired Tapui on January 23 last year at a "difficult time" in her personal life, just one week after the funeral of her brother and a little over a month after her mother died.

As the full details of the saga emerged, Tapui sold her story to the Mail on Sunday for 95,000, PR guru Max Clifford taking 19,000 commission.

Tapui told the jury she first came to the UK in 2003 to visit her aunt but met her husband-to-be later that year and decided to stay as she was enjoying "a good life".

She married Mr Zivancevic at Christ Church in Turnham Green, Chiswick, west London, on May 12 2007 – just three weeks after telling him she was an illegal immigrant.

Immigration rules normally require non-EU citizens to obtain Home Office permission before marrying in Britain, but Church of England weddings are exempt from the rules.