Who is looking at your tax credit information at the Department for Work and Pensions?

A civil servant and his accomplice have been jailed after they were caught inventing 1,400 children and illegally accessing UK tax credit claimant’s accounts.

Civil servant John Brian Agdomoar (42), from Hackney in London, worked for the Department for Work and Pensions.

During this time he devised a scheme with Olanekan Omatayo Ogunmekan from Bethnal Green in London, to defraud the tax credit system to the tune of £1.2 million.

The pair hijacked hundreds of identities and illegally accessed genuine customer records to do this.

Names, dates of birth and national insurance numbers were taken from accessed benefit systems to get information on genuine people.

He is believed to have illegally accessed more than 2,500 customer accounts.

Payments for existing claims were diverted into a complex network of bank accounts.

Both are behind bars after being caught out by  HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) investigators.

Agdomar was jailed for four and a half years after being arrested back in 2008, on suspicion of a number of charges related to conspiracy to commit fraud in relation to tax credits and acquiring criminal property under the proceeds of crime act 2002.

Both men appeared before Southwark Crown Court on 5 November 2008, where 35 year-old Ogunmekan pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and was sentenced to four years three months in prison for the offences.

He is also serving a default sentence of two and a half years as he failed to repay £162,652.71 by 15 September 2009, as ordered by the court.

Olanekan Omatayo Ogunmekan is a Nigerian national and to be automatically deported back to Nigeria on his release. He will then be banned for life from returning to the UK.

An HMRC spokesperson said: “This was a deplorable abuse of a position of trust and today’s verdict shows that those who believe they can cheat the system should think again.

“This was no victimless crime, but a calculated fraud involving a significant amount of money. HMRC will not hesitate to seek prosecution where we find instances of tax credit fraud.”