Three men have been jailed for a combined sixteen-and-a-half years for attempting to steal over £1m in tax repayments by setting up thousands of bogus HMRC accounts online, using the names of children who had died
Saheed Oyeneye, Oluwakemi Adesaogun and Rasaq Omotunde, all from south east London, used stolen and fabricated data – including the names of sports personalities and deceased children – to set up thousands of fake online VAT and self assessment accounts.
At the peak of the fraud, the trio used more than 20 internet cafes to register up to 310 new accounts a day.
Most of the attempts were unsuccessful, as HMRC identified the bogus accounts early on. However, around £250,000 was paid out, with the men banking the proceeds in one of hundreds of bank accounts under their control. Investigators discovered the personal details of over 200 deceased children were stored on computers recovered during searches of the defendants’ properties.
Christopher Gill, assistant director, criminal investigation, HMRC, said: ‘This trio thought they were running a high-tech and sophisticated fraud using a series of addresses and internet cafes to set up accounts using stolen data. They bombarded the system with applications for tax repayments from these fake accounts, in the hope of getting rich quick.
‘These fraudsters thought the anonymity of the internet would protect them. This was nothing but a common repayment fraud attempt which our systems quickly identified as bogus. HMRC shuts down the vast majority of bogus repayment applications.’
Oyeneye was sentenced to five years in prison at Southwark Crown Court; Adesaogun received a five-and-a-half year sentence; and Omotunde a six year prison term.
The case follows the earlier successful conviction of Mutiu Oladele Lawal and Saheed Dolapo Sanni, who obtained stolen data from Oyeneye.
