Three sophisticated
fraudsters who used the names of more than 200 dead children to launder
profits from an attempted £1m VAT fraud have been jailed for more than
16 years.
Saheed
Oyeneye, 35, Rasaq Omotunde, 38, and Oluwakemi Adesaogun, 38, all from
south east London, set up hundreds of bogus online HMRC accounts to ‘get
rich quick’ off the public purse.
The
Nigerian-born adopted false identities of hundreds of unsuspecting
victims, mirroring the tactic employed by the assassin in The Day of the
Jackal, as part of his plot to shoot French president Charles de
Gaulle.
In total,
the gang managed to pocket around £250,000, which was banked across
hundreds of accounts which had been set up under false names.
But the trio were rumbled early on by HMRC and did not pay out more than three-quarters of the money.
When
their homes were searched, investigators discovered the personal
details of more than 200 dead children were stored on computers, the
court heard.