Four fraudsters who stole £6m from the taxpayer have been ordered to pay back £976,000, or face more time in jail.

Youri Khomitch, Victoria Chambers, Oleksandra Hawkins and Alexander Sokolovski were jailed in 2010 after an HMRC investigation. They had set up bogus companies offering accountancy services to eastern European workers. The gang used the workers' identity documents and created fictitious people to submit more than 3,000 false Self-Assessment returns.

The gang leaders were married couple Khomitch, 38, and Chambers, 39. They bought a luxury £2m home on a gated development in Kent, and a string of other properties used for rental income and as correspondence addresses for the fraud. They enjoyed expensive holidays in Japan, Dubai, New York and Thailand, and sent their eldest children to private school. Chambers spent thousands on gold and diamond jewellery, and a breast enlargement operation.

Alexander Sokolovski, 61, was the 'bank man' who specialised in false identities. He set up fraudulent companies which the rest of the gang used as a cover for the fraud, and used fake identities to open the bank accounts used to receive the illegal rebates. Hawkins, 44, was company secretary for the two companies used to commit the fraud.

David Cowie, assistant director, HMRC said: 'This gang stole identities and vast amounts of money to live a luxury lifestyle that they neither earned nor deserved. We were determined that they did not leave jail to enjoy that lifestyle again, and had all assets held by the defendants restrained prior to confiscation proceedings.'