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CPS pair from West Midlands admit £1m taxi fares scam | CPS pair from West Midlands admit £1m taxi fares scam |
(35 minutes later) | |
Two Crown Prosecution Service employees have admitted making more than £1m worth of bogus claims for taxi fares. | Two Crown Prosecution Service employees have admitted making more than £1m worth of bogus claims for taxi fares. |
Lisa Burrows, 41, and Tahir Mahmood, 50, admitted producing invoices for a fictitious cab firm purporting to cater for witnesses. | |
Burrows, a finance manager, from Oldbury, West Midlands, and office worker Mahmood, from Hodge Hill, Birmingham, will be sentenced in July. | |
They were warned to expect "inevitable" jail terms at Birmingham Crown Court. | They were warned to expect "inevitable" jail terms at Birmingham Crown Court. |
The pair, both of previous good character, are believed to have used the proceeds of the five-year scam to pay off a mortgage and fund trips to Dubai. | |
Expensive purchases | |
They admitted fraud by abuse of position and were remanded in custody pending the preparation of pre-sentence reports. | |
Burrows, of Titford Road, and Mahmood, of Eastbourne Avenue, were charged after an investigation by police acting on a complaint from the CPS. | |
Prosecutor Brian Dean told the court that investigators were still attempting to trace the proceeds of the fraud. | Prosecutor Brian Dean told the court that investigators were still attempting to trace the proceeds of the fraud. |
Asking Judge Nicholas Webb for the case to be adjourned until 4 July, the barrister said ongoing inquiries into international bank accounts were being made by the Serious Organised Crime Agency. | |
Mr Dean said: "There is not, at the moment, any explanation for where the money has gone. | |
"A financial analyst is considering all the information so that a sentencing judge can be given a very clear idea of precisely what has happened to the money." | |
It was possible, Mr Dean said, that Mahmood had used £120,000 to clear a mortgage, while Burrows was thought to have visited Dubai on many occasions. | |
An earlier hearing at Birmingham Magistrates' Court was informed that Mahmood, who worked for the CPS as an administrative assistant, opened bank accounts using a different surname to facilitate the fraud. | |
The hearing at the lower court also heard that inquiries into Burrows' finances found evidence of expensive purchases of designer clothes, jewellery and holidays. | |
At the time of the previous hearing on 28 February, no more than £1,400 had been found in accounts connected to Mahmood, who claimed no funds were left from the extensive fraud. |
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