A SELF-STYLED man of the cloth travelled from Brussels on Eurostar to collect housing benefit from Haringey Council, a court heard this week.

Pastor Jean Paul Moka Ngolo Mpati was jailed for 18 months at the Old Bailey on Monday.

A jury found him guilty of obtaining money by deception by defrauding the London Borough of Hounslow of £2,290.

But the Congo-born pastor escaped further punishment when the jury failed to agree on whether he deceived Haringey Council.

Mpati had claimed he was fully entitled to the £525 a month housing benefit.

He told the court he was tenant of a property in Dorset Road, Tottenham, and used the housing benefit to pay rent to his aunt.

But prosecutor Robert Meikle said the landlord of the Tottenham property had no idea Mpati was a tenant.

It was one of a series of bizarre stories told by the well-spoken Mpati, who claimed he was educated at Harvard.

He told the court he had a twin brother -- also a pastor -- called Jean Moka Ngolo Mumbi, or Ian to his friends.

He added that he has an estranged wife, Stephanie, a girlfriend in England, Yvonne, and a girlfriend in Belgium, Hilda. And to complicate matters, his brother's wife Bertha is Hilda's twin sister.

Sentencing Mpati, Judge Henry Blacksell said the pastor had told "a pack of lies."

Mpati was arrested on August 5 last year soon after arriving on Eurostar to make a false housing benefit claim in Hounslow.

After the jury failed to reach a verdict on the Tottenham charges, Judge Blacksell discharged them and ordered the charges to lie on file.

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