Two Nigerians have been jailed in the UK for Covid palliative fraud.
Timilehin Yvette Olasemo, 39 and Olufunmi David Akinneye were jailed for exploiting UK government’s COVID-19 Bounce Back loan scheme by using the identities of eight innocent people to fraudulently obtain £489,000.
The Metropolitan Police said Olasemo of Bedale Road, Romford, appeared at Southwark Crown Court on Wednesday, 17 March and was sentenced to three years and two months’ imprisonment for conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation.
He got the light sentence ostensibly because he did not waste the time of the court. He pleaded guilty to the offence on 12 November, 2020 at Southwark Crown Court.
His co-defendant, Akinneye, 33, of Cowthorpe Road, Lambeth, also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years and six months’ imprisonment for conspiracy, money laundering and fraud.
The Metropolitan Police said due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the UK Government created a scheme to support businesses struggling through the lack of economic activity.
The scheme was effectively a Government-backed loan organised and managed through UK banks.
The size of the loan available is determined by turnover demonstrated by the business to the satisfaction of the bank.
The convicts capitalised on the peculiar nature of the scheme. The loan scheme was set up to ensure that applicants were passed through the process fairly fast, which meant that limited security checks were carried out.
The court heard how Olasemo exploited the weaknesses in the application system and realised that she, with assistance of others, could create fake businesses – using the identities of real people – to apply for the loans.
As the business account had been registered to a separate address to the personal account holder’s address, its existence would not become apparent to the real personal account holder until the bank chased them for the loan repayments.
Akinneye was the first out of the two to be identified during ongoing enquiries into organised criminality by officers of the Met’s North West London Economic Crime Unit. Olasemo was identified from evidence seized during Akinneye’s arrest.
On Friday, 16 October, officers from Met’s North West Economic Crime Unit, part of the Metropolitan Police Service’s Central Specialist Crime Command, arrested Olasemo at her home address. She was charged and remanded in custody the same day.
The investigating officers identified that £489,000 worth of fraudulent loan applications were made using ten identities. Of this, £297,000 worth of loans were successfully obtained by the pair and dissipated. The remaining amount was successfully stopped by the banks.
It was discovered that Olasemo had obtained and used the personal details of eight individuals in order to fraudulently apply for the loans. She had stolen these identities after accessing employee records containing personal information during her employment.
