Four members of a Southampton-based organised crime gang, who stole more than 3,000 identities in an attempt to defraud £2m of income tax, have been jailed following an investigation by HMRC.
The four men, all originally from Eastern Europe, ran a scheme whereby they submitted false self assessment tax repayment claims using stolen and hijacked identities.
The gang took the identities from people who answered their fake classified adverts offering the possibility of work placed in a UK-based magazine aimed at Eastern Europeans, and also created identities based on contact details found in other classified notices. Most of their victims were Polish people living in the UK, often London-based builders and construction workers looking for jobs or advertising their business services.
HMRC described one of the gang, Lyubomyr Sytaiylo, as the 'brains of the operation'. He had previously been a tax agent assisting Eastern Europeans to claim back overpaid tax, and a number of people who contacted him for tax assistance also had their identities hijacked and used in the fraud.
After an identity was chosen, the gang would fly friends and acquaintances from Lithuania into the UK to open bank accounts and create taxpayer identities in hijacked names. When their job was done these 'identity mules' were allowed to return home.
The HMRC investigation began early in 2009 after Dorset Police discovered a number of Eastern European identity documents and hundreds of HMRC forms in different names at an address in Bournemouth when they were investigating a separate bail offence.
Further investigations, including at Sytaiylo's home in the exclusive Sandbanks area of Poole, suggested he was the ring leader of an organised crime gang, which HMRC says carried out at least 1,300 separate attempted frauds in a bid to claim at least £2m from HMRC. Over £1.3m was withheld when officers checking repayment claims became suspicious, but HMRC says the true extent of the fraud and number of identities stolen may never be known.
The fraud took place between January 2006 and August 2011. Sytaiylo and Ruslanas Bobrovas masterminded the operation, while Besik Zveiba took charge of the gang's activities and controlled the identity mules brought into the UK. Kardo Anderson was responsible for assisting the people who entered the UK and ensuring the accounts were opened.
Zoe Ellerbeck, HMRC assistant director criminal investigation, said: 'This was a blatant, highly-organised attack to defraud the UK tax system of vast sums of money using the stolen identities of unsuspecting people. During our four-year investigation we discovered the gang hijacked at least 3,000 different identities in an attempt to claim money they weren't entitled to.'
Zveiba and Anderson were found guilty by jury at Southampton Crown Court on 2 July 2013 of conspiracy to cheat the revenue. Bobrovas pleaded guilty to conspiracy to cheat the revenue On 26 April 2013 and Sytaiylo pleaded guilty in March 2013 to the conspiracy.
All four received jail sentences totalling 22 1/2 years. Two other people were found not guilty of all charges on 2 July 2013. A seventh person arrested in March 2011 failed to answer bail.
