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.<\/p>\n
Civil servant John Brian Agdomoar (42), from Hackney in London, worked for the Department for Work and Pensions.<\/p>\n
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 \u00a31.2 million.<\/p>\n
The pair hijacked hundreds of identities and illegally accessed genuine customer records to do this.<\/p>\n
Names, dates of birth and national insurance numbers were taken from accessed benefit systems to get information on genuine people.<\/p>\n
He is believed to have illegally accessed more than 2,500 customer accounts.<\/p>\n
Payments for existing claims were diverted into a complex network of bank accounts.<\/p>\n
Both are behind bars after being caught out by\u00a0 HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) investigators.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
He is also serving a default sentence of two and a half years as he failed to repay \u00a3162,652.71 by 15 September 2009, as ordered by the court.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
“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.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A civil servant and his accomplice have been jailed after they were caught inventing 1,400 children and illegally accessing UK<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bristol-news"],"yoast_head":"\n