A fraudster who pretended to work for Greggs to con the council out of greater than £700,000 in Covid grants has been jailed for 4 years.
Aftab Baig, 47, of Glasgow, contacted Leeds Metropolis Council in Could 2020 claiming to be a gaggle property supervisor at Greggs head workplace.
The authentic-looking e mail was from a pretend company e mail handle and included a listing of all 32 retailers within the metropolis.
It requested for enterprise charges numbers for Leeds branches, particulars which the sender stated he couldn’t entry himself on account of lockdown.
Baig and others used the main points to use for charges reduction from the small enterprise grant fund, a scheme arrange by the Authorities to assist small companies keep afloat through the pandemic.
The court docket heard Baig finally swindled the council out of £710,000 by the fraud and organized for the cash to enter the checking account of his personal meals takeaway enterprise.
The council realised the claims have been fraudulent 5 days later and the account was frozen.
Whereas many of the cash was later returned to the native authority, greater than £90,000 was left excellent.
Baig was arrested in Glasgow in July 2020 by Police Scotland officers and £16,000 was discovered at his home, in addition to solid remittance slips which officers believed he was planning to make use of to influence the financial institution to return the frozen cash.
Baig was discovered responsible of three counts of fraud in February.
The court docket heard he took benefit of a system arrange in lockdown to cope with claims ‘rapidly and with minimal safety checks’ to trigger minimal disruption to companies.
Jailing Baig for 4 years, Choose Man Kearl, the Recorder of Leeds, stated: ‘This was a disgraceful try to deprive the Authorities of monies which have been in brief provide at a time of maximum public nervousness and disaster.’
Kelly Ward, from the Crown Prosecution Service, stated: ‘Baig took benefit of the troublesome circumstances of the pandemic in 2020 to defraud the council out of taxpayers’ cash.
‘Those that cheat the general public purse are stealing funds which ought to rightly go in direction of companies and the neighborhood, or on this case in direction of supporting small companies by an especially difficult time.’
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