Council worker avoids prison after stealing £72,000 to pay off Kenyan scammers

A council accountant has avoided prison time after she stole more than £70,000 of taxpayers’ money to pay off Kenyan scammers.

Amirum Begum worked in the council’s housing office accountancy department and would record a lower figure of what had been paid by local residents and then pocket the difference.

The 49-year-old, who worked for Portsmouth City Council for 27 years, turned the money into Amazon gift cards.

Once the council discovered the discrepancy, an investigation began, and the police were contacted – leading to Begum losing her job.

Portsmouth Crown Court heard that she had been defrauded in 2021, having applied for a loan from a supposed company in Kenya – which turned out to be a scam.

She was later coerced and intimidated into paying off her scammers, who inundated her with messages and threats.

In total, Begum, from Fratton, in Portsmouth, stole £72,582.17 between April 2022 and January 2023.

Begum was sentenced to eight months in custody, suspended for two years, and ordered to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work. No compensation order was made.

She had previously pleaded guilty at the first opportunity to one count of theft by an employee.

She was also charged with one count of acquiring criminal property, and one count of false accounting, but was not sentenced for these indictments, which were instead kept on file.

Sentencing, Judge Michael Bowes KC said: ‘This is a serious offense. The city council serves the community, and is funded by public money, which you stole.

‘You frequently cashed up monies received and would print the daily cash total reports. You changed the amounts, and kept the difference. The police were involved, and you subsequently lost your job.

‘You became involved through coercion, intimidation or exploitation – the court has been provided with the substantial string of messages between you and those purporting to offer you a loan.

‘That does not excuse your theft of public money, but goes quite a long way to explaining what happened.’

A Portsmouth City Council spokesperson said: ‘Acts like this are rare and we take all incidents of this kind very seriously.

‘Once we were made aware of the situation, we investigated the matter and referred it to the police. Appropriate management action was taken and the individual no longer works for the council.

‘We want to reassure tenants that their services were not affected by this incident, which took place three years ago. We manage around 17,000 homes, so the amount of money involved, while significant, makes up a very small part of our total annual rent income.

‘At the time of the incident, we reviewed our processes around cash handling to mitigate against this highly unusual incident happening again.’