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A fraudster has been discovered responsible of conning a council out of £710,000 by claiming Covid reduction for chains of Greggs bakeries he didn’t personal.
Aftab Baig, of Paisley Street West in Glasgow, pretended to work on the common excessive avenue bakery to make fraudulent grant claims in opposition to 32 branches – regardless of having no hyperlinks to the enterprise in any respect.
The 47-year-old claimed reduction from the small enterprise grant fund, designed to maintain small companies afloat in the course of the Covid lockdown, to be paid into his enterprise account for his personal catering enterprise.
Baig contacted Leeds Metropolis Council in Might 2020 pretending to be a property supervisor at Greggs head workplace asking for enterprise charges numbers for Leeds branches – particulars which he claimed he couldn’t entry himself attributable to lockdown – so he may apply for the fund.
When the council realised the claims had been fraudulent they froze his account and Baig was arrested in Glasgow two months later. Whereas many of the cash was later returned to the council, greater than £90,000 was left excellent.
National Crime Agency officers discovered £16,000 in money at his home alongside cast remittance slips which officers believed he was planning to make use of to try to persuade the financial institution to return the frozen cash.
Baig was discovered responsible of three counts of fraud on 12 February following a trial at Leeds Crown Courtroom.
After the conviction, Kelly Ward from the Crown Prosecution Service stated: “Baig took benefit of the tough 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 the direction of companies and the group, or on this case in the direction of supporting small companies by a particularly difficult time.
“We can be beginning proceedings to get well any belongings ensuing from this criminality.”
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