British expat who ‘lied’ about claiming benefits ‘goes on hunger strike’ in Thai prison
18 March 2025, 15:33
A British expat who boasted about claiming benefits while living abroad has said she is on hunger strike after being thrown in a Thai jail.
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Ellis Matthews, 32, is currently being held at a centre for mothers with children in the Thai capital with her four-year-old son.
The Mothers and Children Immigration Detention Centre in Bangkok reportedly has a reputation for being overcrowded and in a poor state.
The mother-of-three was thrown in the facility for allegedly overstaying her visa for ten extra days.
Ms Matthews claims she has not eaten for days as she protests the ‘hell on earth’ conditions at the facility.
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“I’m locked up in a cell for most of the day with 16 other people and none of them speak English. It’s so hot and overcrowded that you can barely breathe.
“Nobody is helping me, and I’ve just been left here to rot. We can’t sleep at night because there’s so much screaming and shouting,” she told Mailonline.
She added that the “food is disgusting”, with inmates being “rat meat with badly cooked rice so I'm not missing much”.
Before this, Ms Mattews was seen online boasting about claiming benefits while living abroad. In a video posted to TikTok, the mother of one said she has raked in £2,300 in Disability Living Allowance ‘for the past four years of not living in the UK’.
Under the @mumontheruninasia’ account, she said she qualified because of ‘six mental disorders’ which needed ‘ongoing treatment costs to be met by the NHS by the taxpayer’.
But Ms Matthews has since appeared to suggest she was lying to get more followers on social media.
She told MailOnline: "These videos were just a joke. The truth is that I never got any UK benefits while in Thailand, not a single penny.”
