Guilty: migrant cleaning lady who duped England's top legal officer

• Loloahi Tapui (left). Attorney General Baroness Scotland (right) was fined 5,000 for failing to copy the documents

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

A jury of eight men and four women took less than 90 minutes to find the 27-year-old Tongan guilty of fraud.

Tapui, who showed no emotion as the verdicts were returned, will be sentenced on 7 May for fraud, possessing a false identity document and for overstaying her student visa. She was bailed and will be electronically tagged.

But judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith told Christopher Hehir, defending, that Tapui "must understand that the grant of bail is not a promise of how she will ultimately be dealt with".

Tapui, who knew she should have left the UK in February 2005, told a series of "barefaced lies" and convinced 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 Tapui claimed showed she was entitled to work in the UK, told Southwark Crown Court in London she "bitterly regrets" her mistake to this day.

The row catapulted the 54-year-old minister, who helped to form the law under which she was censured, into the centre of a political controversy. One of her key aides resigned and her reputation as a reliable and safe pair of hands in the government tarnished.

Lady Scotland said Tapui had breached her trust. She told the jury the defendant knew how important honesty and abiding by the law was to her and her family, but had lied to her nonetheless.

Lady Scotland denied she had been so busy with her work that 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.

"You would need to be brain-dead to do something like that."

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

As the full details of the saga emerged, Tapui sold her story to the Mail on Sunday for 95,000, with 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 admitted taking her CV and pay-slips to the interview with Lady Scotland, in an attempt to convince her that she was legally entitled to work in the UK because she was "so desperate" for work.

Tapui said she paid 180 cash to a Russian called Alex for a fake visa stamp, but denied knowing it was fake.

Tapui, from Chiswick, had pleaded guilty to possessing a passport with a counterfeit visa stamp between 7 June, 2006, and 19 September, 2009.

But she was cleared of using it to establish facts about herself and earn money.

Tapui left the court without comment.

Profile: Trail-blazer for black women

BARONESS Scotland of Asthal has made a habit of blazing a trail throughout her high-flying career.

In 1991, she was the first black woman to be made Queen's Counsel. She then went down in the history books in 1999 as the first black woman to serve as a government minister.

Then, when Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister in June 2007, she added a double distinction to her already packed CV, becoming both the first black Attorney General and the only woman to hold the post.

She was born Patricia Scotland, the tenth of 12 children, in Dominica in 1955. When she was three, her family moved to London, and she studied law before being called to the Bar.

In 1985, she married Richard Mawhinney, with whom she has two sons.

She appeared to be in line for a job as a High Court judge, but Tony Blair had other ideas, and made her a baroness in 1997. She has served as a Foreign and Home Office minister.

Profile: Tongan lived 'good life' in UK

LOLOAHI Tapui's criminal actions led to Lady Scotland being accused of lying in court – claims of which she has now been exonerated by the jury's guilty verdicts.

Tapui, a Tongan whose friends call her Lolo, came to the UK in February 2003, on a six-month visa to visit her aunt.

She applied for, and was granted, a student visa to study English and was allowed to stay in the UK until October 2004.

In February 2005, she was told she had to leave. But she carried on living her "good life" in the UK. She married Alex Zivancevic in London in 2007 – 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. Questions were raised about Tapui's marriage, which she reportedly described as an "open relationship" on singles websites.