A well-off couple who lived a life of luxury financed by greed and dishonesty have been jailed.

Shiraz Ali and Hajirah Khan have each been sentenced to 15 months in prison for a variety of offences.

Ali illegally ran a lucrative business, producing and selling counterfeit computer games for the black market.

He was found to have a vast stock of hundreds of copies of games, with a face value of £90,000, in his van when he was routinely stopped by police.

More evidence of his illegal business, Gamers Heaven, was found in boxes piled high in the garage of their marital home, a detached four-bedroom property in Ring Road, Oadby.

Ali (45) plied his wares at fairs and via a business website.

He even sold gadgets to by-pass manufacturers' security measures, allowing counterfeit copies to be played on Sony PlayStations and Microsoft Xboxes.

Khan kept the couple's four properties a secret by lying on benefit application forms, and hid receiving more than £40,000 rental income from three of the homes, while pocketing almost £28,000 in benefits.

Her lavishly-furnished family home has four bathrooms and an expensive kitchen. It had electronically-operated gates, an intercom system, and four flat screen televisions, along with an array of electrical and computer equipment.

At her trial in July, Khan (33) was found guilty of four offences of making false statements to obtain benefit, which she had denied.

She was also convicted of dishonestly obtaining a mortgage for £149,845 for the family home. She also gave false information to acquire another mortgage.

She is now separated from 44-year-old Ali, with whom she has three children.

Ali, now of Victoria Court, Oadby, admitted 14 copyright charges. He also admitted making a false statement to obtain state benefit for Khan, in March 2004, by incorrectly stating he did not have any property and was receiving no income.

He further pleaded guilty to 17 other offences involving possessing pirated games.

At the sentencing hearing, the court heard that the defendants feared their children would suffer if they were sent to jail.

In mitigation it was said no-one lost out from the mortgage fraud as the payments continued on three properties they still owned, and the benefit money was being repaid.

Judge Ian Collis told Ali: "This was a significant enterprise you were engaged in. You knew what you were doing was illegal, and did it to get money.

"You and Khan applied for benefits you weren't entitled to, motivated by getting as much money you could, by greed."

He told Khan: "Against a background of wealth, you applied for benefits to obtain more."

He said she had told "a tissue of lies" about her financial position.

The couple now face losing their assets in a confiscation hearing due next February.