When 46-year-old Remi Fakorede was charged with defrauding the British government out of nearly £1 million pounds (about $NZ2.7 million), the mother-of-six claimed she was the victim of a voodoo curse.
And she had the severed fingers to prove it.
Fakorede, accused of cheating the government by using dozens of fake identities to rake in tax credits, claimed that the "forces of darkness" had allowed the cash to be paid into her account.
In her testimony, the Nigerian-born woman said a magic spell had killed her mother and taken the fingers from her three-year-old daughter. Then, she reached into her hand bag and pulled out tissue-wrapped digits as proof. The British Broadcasting Corp. said she brandished two severed fingers, other media said three were used.
The gruesome display at London's Snaresbrook Crown Court shocked the judge but did not sway the jury, which sentenced her to five years in prison on Thursday.
Judge Jacqueline Beech called Fakorede's defense of voodoo "utterly unbelievable".
"The most shocking aspect of your conduct being your assertion that your mother was murdered by having been put under a voodoo-type spell," Beech said on Thursday, condemning the "actual production of you in court of the fingers of a child during your evidence."
It was not known for sure whether the fingers Fakorede brandished in court were indeed her daughter's, although the child had lost part of her hand after suffering renal problems and developing gangrene.
Authorities took DNA tests of the fingers, but the results of those tests were not made clear in court. Fakorede's lawyer Andrea Ferguson said police had decided not to prosecute over the display, something she claimed showed everything was in order.
Fakorede invented 20 imaginary families with children - often disabled twins - and used fake social security numbers to draw in more than £925,000. She was convicted on one count of fraud. Another one of her daughters, 21-year-old Denise Shofolawe-Coker, was found guilty of money laundering and jailed for a year.
It was not exactly clear when Fakorede made her unusual defense: British media were banned from reporting the incident until she was found guilty earlier this month.
