A woman whose London home was seized using a forged death certificate and a made-up husband is actually alive, a High Court judge has ruled.
June Ashimola, 55, bought the property in Plumstead, southeast London, in 2003 and left it behind when she returned to Nigeria in 2018.
A “campaign” was then mounted to gain control of the £436,000 Warland Road home, with bogus claims that Ms Ashimola had died in Nigeria in 2019 and the property would pass on to her ‘husband’.
However, Deputy Master Linwood, sitting at the High Court in London, has now ruled that she is very much alive and forged documents were used in the attempted fraud.
He also found that Ms Ashimola’s ‘marriage’ in 1993 to Bakare Olatoye Lasisi was a work of “fiction”.
The judge identified Tony Ashikodi, a convicted fraudster, as the man behind the scheme. He had served a three-year prison sentence in 1996 for a separate plot to obtain property by deception.
And his own sister, Justina, gave evidence against him in the civil trial, calling him manipulative and telling the judge: “Tony can forge anything from Nigeria.”
In his ruling, the judge found that Ms Ashimola had attempted to sell the home in 2017, but faced a statutory demand from Mr Ashikodi for £98,000 – claiming he had a stake in the property.
Power of attorney over the affairs of Ms Ashimola and her ‘husband’ was granted to Ruth Samuel, and in 2019 the bogus death certificate emerged.
A supposed marriage certificate was also put forward to the court, as alleged proof of Mr Lasisi’s claim over the property.
But the judge found Mr Ashikodi has a “cavalier disregard for the truth”, he dodged questions during the trial, and he is the person who had controlled efforts to take control of the house. Ms Samuel was acting “at the behest” of Mr Ashikodi and would do his “bidding”, he said.
“I find that Ms Ashimola was not married to Mr Lasisi and that the Marriage Certificate is a concocted or fraudulent document”, said the judge, who noted no evidence – such as joint bank accounts and holiday photos - had been produced to show the existence of married life.
“I do not accept Mr Lasisi exists or if he does is aware of his identity being used. I do not accept that emails supposedly from him were actually from him.”
He said probate power of attorney was a fraud, and concluded: “I find Ms Ashimola is alive and that the Death Certificate was forged and/or fraudulently obtained or produced or concocted.”
The judge said Ms Ashimola’s own evidence, delivered over a poor quality videolink from Nigeria, was pivotal in the case.
Over the video, the judge assessed that she looked just like the image on her expired passport, and he also found that the passport signature did not match those on the forged documents.
“Her alleged death was part of Mr Tony Ashikodi's attempts to wrest control of the property”, set out the judge.
He overturned a grant of Letters of Administration for Ms Ashimola’s estate issued to Ms Samuel in 2022.
The judge also noted that an application to stay his decision, as well as nine other court filings, had been lodged “supposedly by Mr Lasisi” after the circulation of his draft ruling, before it had even been formally delivered.
