A CAMPAIGNER for gispy rights who played a part in an elaborate benefits scam has been jailed.

Lavinia Olmazu, 31, and her boyfriend Alin Enachi, 30, masterminded a scam which saw 172 Romanians claim a total of £2.9 million.

Olmazu was today jailed for two years three months at Southwark Crown Court.

Olmazu, of Newlands Road, Woodford Green, was working as an 'inclusivity outreach worker' with Roma gypsies for both Waltham Forest and Haringey councils.

The court heard that she set up companies with Enachi to help facilitate the frauds they carried out as part of a gang.

Enachi, a part-time interpreter from Romania, helped immigrants - mainly from Romania - get National Insurance numbers with bogus documents, such as bank statements and letters of recommendation, which claimed they were working.

Romanian immigrants are not entitled to a National Insurance number and a number of benefits, unless they can prove to the authorities they have been employed.

Olmazu and Enachi would offer false documents to migrants and also provided them with fake references.

Olmazu, an educational therapist with two degrees and an 11-year-old son, had dedicated her life to studying Roma gypsies.

She admitted conspiracy to supply articles to defraud in July.

After the sentencing Det Con Melanie Groves said: "This is a clear case of Roma families who wished to improve their lives but were prevented from doing so by being exploited by their own people.

"Olmazu is an educated Roma lady who abused her position of trust and purported to be trying to help Roma people integrate into this country, yet actually assisted them to obtain benefits through false pretences.

"This undermines the work of those who are genuinely concerned with the difficult issues Roma people face throughout Europe."

Enachi and six other who were involved in the scam were sentenced to a total of more than nine years in July.