A man from the Old Kent Road has been jailed for defrauding Richmond Council out of more than £150,000.
The man, identified only as Mr D in a Richmond Council report, took £153,566.05 from Richmond and Wandsworth Councils in south-west London, after getting a job as a direct payments officer – without any references.
Mr D found accounts that had surpluses owed to the councils, said he was going to transfer them to Richmond or Wandsworth, but transferred them to his own bank account instead.
He did this more than 60 times in total, according to the report. Mr D was eventually caught when a co-worker finally noticed a suspicious transaction. He was employed via an agency and staff did not know his home address – so police had to wait until May 2021 to arrest him when he came into the office.
Mr D was released under investigation and pleaded guilty to fraud in September last year. He was sentenced on December 15 to two years and two months in prison.
Neither council has been able to get back much money from Mr D – the judge imposed a “compensation order” of £1,180 that he had to pay, which effectively covered all of his assets.
The fraud seems relatively simple: the money that he stole came from the councils’ social care budget. People who used these cards were given pre-paid debit cards to pay for carers or other essentials. Any money that was not used came back to the councils. He was not caught for a long time because no one was thinking to check.
The Richmond Council report said: “He counted on taking advantage of a stretched service, due to imposed operational changes as a result of the Covid pandemic, that his activity would go unnoticed as individual service users were not affected and would not challenge the account withdrawals.”
The councils have now changed their working methods so staff cannot change bank account details for these kinds of payments.