A Derby bookkeeper who pretended to be a fully qualified accountant to steal £143,957 in tax, sending more than £100,000 to an online lover in Canada, has been jailed for three-and-a-half years
David Price lied about his qualifications to masquerade as a tax adviser before fraudulently claiming tax repayments and keeping money his clients provided to settle their tax bills.
HMRC discovered the frauds after one of Price’s clients was subject to a tax enquiry. Price attempted to hide his crimes by making false allegations against HMRC staff and faking letters to his clients telling them HMRC’s enquiry was being investigated by The Adjudicator’s Office, which examines complaints about HMRC.
Despite being married for over 40 years, Price sent £102,160 of the money he stole to a woman in Canada he’d struck up an online relationship with, but never met.
The money was sent illegally by breaching anti-money laundering regulations.
Price stole £50,389 from 13 of his many clients over a five-year period from 2008. He did so by keeping money they gave him to settle their tax bills, adapting their tax returns to HMRC to show they owed nothing.
He also provided HMRC and his clients with different versions of the same accounts. Clients’ tax returns showed they had nothing to pay while the HMRC version claimed a tax repayment, which he pocketed.
Price sent £40,280 to his Canadian companion between 2009 and 2010 before using prepaid cash cards to transfer a further £61,880. At the same time, he declared just £710 profit from his bookkeeping business and his own finances were strained – his mortgage arrears were £13,000.
He was discovered after he tried to block an audit of one of his clients. He altered the dates on documents sent from HMRC to claim the audit was out of time and therefore could not proceed.
Price made two attempts to stop the trial from going ahead. He claimed he was not fit to stand trial as he suffered from agoraphobia, claustrophobia, heart failure and panic attacks but a judge ruled it could go ahead. He also claimed that he could not receive a fair trial due to lost evidence, which was also rejected.
He was sentenced to three and a half years imprisonment at Derby Crown Court on 1 February 2018.
Confiscation proceedings to recover the stolen money have begun.
Report by Pat Sweet
