A notorious TikTok ‘mum on the run’ who boasted about claiming UK benefits while living it up in Thailand has been jailed for more than two years.
Ellis Matthews, 35, shot to online fame after fleeing Britain while pregnant and documenting her ‘dream life’ in South-East Asia to thousands of followers.
The mother-of-one, from Bamber Bridge, became a controversial figure on social media after openly sharing tips on how to claim benefits from abroad and bragging about how her life in Thailand was funded by fiddling £2,300 per month in British benefits.
But her sunshine lifestyle soon came crashing down.
Last March, Matthews was arrested by immigration officials at her home in Pattaya and locked up in what she described as a ‘hell hole prison’ crawling with rats and cockroaches.
She told followers she was detained after authorities raised concerns about her child’s welfare and was convinced social services would take Cairo from her if she did return.
Her shabby cell was in the notorious Mothers and Children Immigration Detention Centre in Bangkok, where she was confined to her room for more than 20 hours per day with 16 other female inmates and their children, surviving on lumpy rice and rat meat while sleeping on a dirty concrete floor.
Her visa was cancelled and she spent 15 weeks behind bars in a Bangkok detention centre before being deported back to the UK – leaving her young son behind with family.
Ellis Matthews, who called herself a ‘mum on the run’, has been jailed for more than two years over drug offences
Matthews was arrested by immigration officials at her home in Thailand last year and locked up with her young son in what she described as a ‘hell hole prison’
She claimed she had to go into hiding on her return as there was an online hate campaign made about her, but within weeks of returning to Lancashire last June, Matthews was arrested over drugs offences.
She later admitted supplying cocaine, as well as possessing cocaine and cannabis.
Matthews was jailed last Friday at Preston Crown Court for 26 months and will serve her sentence at HMP Styal, with 108 days already spent in a Thai jail counted towards her time behind bars.
In 2020, Ms Matthews was caught drug driving after police found her behind the wheel after taking cocaine and cannabis.
According to an article in the Lancashire Telegraph in 2018, the then 28-year-old had failed a roadside swipe test.
She was also later found not to have insurance and was driving other than in accordance with a licence. Matthews was fined £200 with £85 costs.
Previous videos have seen Ms Matthews, who says she ‘ran away’ from the UK while pregnant with her son, helping others to negotiate the UK benefits system while living in the sunshine.
In one video, Matthews, holding a fistful of notes and wearing a string bikini, tells her audience: ‘I picked up my Disability Living Allowance today and I’ve been doing so for the past four years of not living in the UK.’
She explains: ‘I am diagnosed with around six mental disorders that without in-house treatment, without me being put into a hospital for a minimum of one year, my prognosis is quite poor therefore I need ongoing treatment costs to be met by the NHS by the taxpayer, thank you very much.’
The former charity worker adds: ‘So, I receive around £2,300 per month undisputable [SIC] money and that pays for my lifestyle out here in Thailand.’
Ms Matthews then goes on to share tips that could help others in similar situations claim for such benefits and how to avoid attending UK-based meetings.
Prior to her apparent incarceration, she says she lived in a one-bedroom bungalow with ‘rent and bills paid for by the British benefit system’.
In another video though, she claims she lives in a two-bed ‘villa on private land with a communal pool and 24h security’.
According to the UK Government’s website, Gov.co.uk, British citizens living overseas ‘may still be able to claim some benefits’, saying ‘what you’re entitled to depends on where you’re going and how long for’.
Thailand isn’t listed on the countries that currently have a UK benefits arrangement.
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail last year, she said: ‘Leaving Cairo behind was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. But I had no choice because I’m the victim of an online hate campaign that is making me out to be a bad mother.
‘I would never allow him to be passed around suffering in UK care. He has the right to a safe childhood.’
Recalling her time in a Thai prison she said: ‘The conditions were horrific. There were hundreds of women and children crammed into filthy rooms, forced to sleep on bare floors without mattresses.
‘Toilets overflowed, disease spread unchecked, and children were locked indoors for 24 hours a day, with just 35 minutes outside per week.
‘My son saw things no toddler should ever see – fights, violent breakdowns, and abuse. Around 30 per cent of detainees were mentally disabled.
‘They were often beaten and left handcuffed to the bars for days at a time. Cairo refused to eat prison food and regressed to full breastfeeding.
‘At one point, I even breastfed another starving child because there was no other way to keep them alive.’
She added: ‘Children were malnourished, untreated, and left in despair. Cairo lost weight, regressed developmentally, and became traumatised.
‘After his eventual release, he was diagnosed with multiple illnesses and needed medical treatment.’
She also added that original TikToks which drew so much attention ‘were just a joke’ and she ‘never got any UK benefits while in Thailand, not a single penny’.
She said: ‘I can understand why people were angry and upset about them which is why there’s not a lot of sympathy for me. But I was just lying in my videos to get more followers and make some money from my TikTok account. It was all a big hoax, that’s all.’
She added: ‘Most of the time I was just sharing about my life on TikTok that showed me cooking, cleaning, raising my son, and talking openly about the harassment I was facing.
‘Yes, before jail I made some ‘rage bait’ videos, but my genuine accounts always showed our reality. Those truths were twisted and weaponised by stalkers hiding behind fake profiles.’
When she returned to the UK, Ms Matthews has posted a number of videos on social media sharing other vivid details of her time in detention.
In one video she reveals: ‘Imagine being locked in a filthy foreign jail with your three-year-old baby. That was me and my son Cairo. There was no beds no toys just a concrete floor that my three-year-old cried to sleep on every night while I was fighting people to protect him.
‘We were trapped inside Thailand’s immigration detention centre sleeping in filth amongst cockroaches and rats. There was mothers breast feeding on the bare floor no nappies no formula no medical care.
‘Some children were malnourished, and the disabled children were abandoned.’
Ms Matthews has also posted other more bizarre videos – in one she films herself feasting on a mixed grill while in another she shows off an egg and sausage boil she has just made and is seen chomping on it as she stares at the camera.
Her posts have been met with mixed comments with one claiming: ‘The way she just leaves her son in another country and forgets about him and acts like she’s still relevant.’
Another fumed: ‘Disgusting,’ while one stated: ‘You literally pay 500 baht per day overstay fine. You didn’t pay the fine and let your go through that. Wild.’
But others have been sympathetic to her plight with one comment saying: ‘So glad you are OK and I hope the wee man is ok too xx.’
Another added: ‘Was so unfair what happened to you both all coz of spiteful cruel people.’
The TikToker, who has listed her former employment as being a charity worker, appeared on an episode of Judge Rinder, the reality show that launched the career of TV barrister Robert Rinder, before she fled the UK.
In the episode, she told the reality TV programme that she’d been awarded £6million after she was let down by Lancashire local authorities in childhood. There’s no record of her ever being awarded compensation from the local authority.
She said: ‘I was raised by the local authority and the case was brought to them for negligence and damages and failure to provide a safe environment. Numerous placements, numerous schools…’
Ms Matthews says her mother was the subject of ‘constant drug raids and was in and out of prison’ and that she lived in 130 homes when she was a child.
She told the programme that she endured one particularly traumatic incident where she was locked in a cupboard under the stairs with a drug user who ‘had overdosed in our house’.
Another recent post saw her say that she doesn’t love the children she’s left behind in the UK, because ‘they’re not a part of my life’, before she adds: ‘I consider them surrogacies’.
