How we are powerless to stop the 'carousel of career beggars Now, it can be disclosed, they have done precisely that: the Roma of Park Lane have boomeranged back. About a third of those sent back in Operation Chefornak - according to Westminster City Council - are known to have returned, Mrs Lacusta among them. Danusica Lascarache, 51, a mother of three, who was given a free ticket home in July, has also come back. Danusica Lascarache at home in Romania in July. Their return after what was effectively a summer holiday in Romania with travel courtesy of the British taxpayer has huge potential to embarrass ministers. It highlights more widely the difficulty of policing what are effectively Britain's open borders - and the burden put on the state by Europe's freedom-of-movement rules. Westminster City Council, the authority in charge of the area, calls it a "farcical" situation that has created a "carousel for career beggars." In Park Lane, the carousel is evidently still turning. Last week, about 14 Roma - the number varies from day to day - spent the night under blankets and boxes outside a car showroom selling supercars for hundreds of thousands of pounds, and a stone's throw from the Dorchester hotel. At 7.30am each day, they pack up their belongings and disperse throughout the capital to beg. The council says it is left to pick up the pieces. Danusica Lascarache, foreground left, in Park Lane on Thursday this week. Cllr Nickie Aiken, Westminster council's cabinet member for community protection, said Theresa May, the Home Secretary, needed to "get a grip of the situation." "The return of the Roma found by The Sunday Telegraph back in Park Lane just weeks after going home at the UK's taxpayers" expense renders the efforts to tackle and manage this problem an utter farce," she said. It is evidence that the taxpayer is funding aggressive beggars to return home for a short holiday before they promptly reappear on the streets of Westminster. At the moment what we are witnessing is a carousel for career beggars. In July, Mrs Lacusta, 38, who lives in Iasi in northern Romania, accepted the offer of a coach trip home, and made the three-day, 1,600-mile journey back to her husband and eight children. But when she spoke to The Sunday Telegraph eight days on, she was already planning her next trip. This time, she has brought her husband. On Thursday, he sat on a bench in Marble Arch playing cards with other Roma men, while she spent her day begging in Edgware Road. "We come here to work because we have children at home," said Mr Lacusta, who did not want to give his first name. We want them to go to school. But we cannot get a job because we do not speak English - it is impossible for me. At home I get £100 a month [in benefits] and I have eight children, and it is not enough. I came here to find work. Ideally I would like to bring my children here as well. Mrs Lascarache, also from Iasi, lives with eight members of her family in a two-room house. She travelled to London earlier in the year to send money back home after Romanian authorities caught her selling scrap metal and stopped her welfare benefits. Mrs Lascarache vowed that she, too, would return in September - and arrived back in the capital last Saturday. Along with other Roma women, she targets wealthy Arabs and other Muslims shopping in Oxford Street and on the nearby Edgware Road. They are rich hunting grounds; it is a central tenet of Islam to give alms, and many Muslims discharge this by giving to beggars. On the bench in Marble Arch, one of the Roma women, who did not want to be named, said: "There are some people, especially the Arab people in the area, who will bring us food and something to drink. It's the Arab people who help because they are kind and they can see we are in need. She said she also wanted to find work but could not because Roma faced discrimination here. "The police come every day and chase us away," she said. The shop won't even let us go in and buy food. I have been trying to have a shower for two weeks, everyone else can pay £2 and have a shower but they say no because I can't speak English. The police come every day and check our ID. Even when we are sleeping they check our papers and then chase us away. If you are English, they do not do that - it is just because we are Romanian that they chase us. Do we chase English people away when they come to Romania? Despite this, they say being hassled on the streets and using subways as a lavatory is preferable to the poverty and discrimination they face at home, where the average monthly salary is around £450 and benefits are much lower. Imad Habib, manager of a newsagents in Park Lane outside of which the Roma sleep, has given up trying to get them to move on. "I have a deal with them now," he said. As long as they have gone and tidied up and taken their rubbish with them by 7.30am, I let them buy tea and coffee. They are not aggressive and are very polite - I do feel sorry for them but they should not be here. They were just given free tickets home and now they are back. This is like a gold mine for them. Hakan Altay, who owns a hairdressers next door, does not have such an amicable relationship with them. "On Tuesday, I had a VIP ­client in and she could not leave," he said. They were fighting outside and I had to call police, but they said they could not do anything. This is one of the most beautiful, ­civilised, expensive streets in London. It is not right, it's not acceptable. The problem of how to tackle the beggars is a vexing one. The Home Office insists that paying for flights is a cheap way of clearing them from London's streets. Under European Union law, the Romanians have a right to be here for 90 days. After that, they need to be working, studying or self-sufficient. Sleeping rough and begging are grounds for removal. By offering to pay for travel home the Government is avoiding a potentially expensive legal battle, which can only begin once the 90-day limit has been passed. After January 1, restrictions in place in Britain on Romanians and Bulgarians, which limit them to certain jobs, will be removed. The change does not materially affect the status of the Romanian beggars in London, but is nevertheless likely to lead to more of them coming, not least because of the publicity surrounding the rule changes. Meanwhile, the authorities are scrambling for solutions. Westminster council estimates it spends more than £500,000 a year tidying up the mess. Cleaning up after the rough sleepers costs about £350,000, added to which are costs of £160,000 for a dedicated community-protection team on the ground. The council spent a further £10,000 in 2011 when the first plan was launched to pay for coach tickets to send the Roma home. The council gave up when it realised the policy was "a bottomless pit." The council wants beggars turned away at the port of entry. Spotting the difference between beggars and Romanians coming on holiday or for social visits should not be hard, say council sources. The Home Office said it was "focusing on cutting out the abuse of free movement" and has demanded the European Commission tighten EU laws. A spokesman said: "If someone with no permission to be in the UK refuses to return home voluntarily, we will take action to remove them. This includes Europeans who have been in the country for longer than three months and are not working, studying or self-sufficient. Border staff have the power to refuse entry to EU nationals on the grounds of public policy, public security or public health. Whatever the difficulties over entry, for the Roma of Park Lane, sleeping rough is a more rewarding prospect than what awaits at home. At lunchtime on Thursday, Mrs Lacusta returned to Marble Arch carrying two new blankets in plastic wrapping, a bag of food and a large, half- eaten chocolate cake. The haul had been donated to her. "An Arab lady saw me and said 'wait here for 10 minutes," then she went into her house and came back with the blankets," Mrs Lacusta explained. She and her fellow Roma then sat down on a nearby bench and began tucking into the cake with spoons taken from a nearby Pret A Manger shop.