A Bridgend meat wholesaler, who faked invoices and falsified business records to claim £428,000 in VAT repayments, has been jailed for three-and-a-half years following an HMRC investigation
The fraud was discovered when a VAT officer became suspicious about monthly VAT returns from Lindsey Stoneham’s company LDLC Ltd and referred the case for criminal investigation. He was originally arrested by HMRC investigators at his business premises in October 2013, and his home was also searched.
Investigators found that Stoneham would ask companies for written quotes. He then manipulated the legitimate documents to verify the fictitious payments shown on his VAT returns. Some of the fraudulent invoices related to the construction of buildings that did not exist, and included £400,000 for constructing agricultural units and £250,000 for the purchase of mobile refrigeration units.
Stoneham was remanded in custody in June this year, after pleading guilty to the fraud between March 2012 and August 2013. He spent a night in police cells for failing to appear at Cardiff Crown Court on 16 June.
Stoneham has now been jailed for three-and-a-half years, disqualified from being a company director for five years, and has to pay £800 towards costs. HMRC is also seeking to recover the proceeds of his crime.
The court heard that Stoneham had expanded his meat wholesale business in late 2011 by taking over a processed food company, borrowing money from the original owners through a private mortgage. He subsequently had difficulties in making the repayments.
Sentencing him, the judge said: ‘This was a sophisticated fraud over a period of time and your principal motivation was financial commitments you could not meet.’
Colin Spinks, HMRC assistant director, fraud investigation service, said: ‘Lindsey Stoneham set out to create a false paper trail to claim money he wasn’t entitled to, but he finally faced up to his crimes and pleaded guilty to VAT fraud after initially failing to attend court. We will continue to carry out detailed investigations to bring fraudsters like Stoneham to justice.’
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