UK Civil Servant Who Held Five Full-Time Jobs at Once Convicted of Nine Fraud Counts Over £284,000
A jury at Southwark Crown Court in London convicted former civil servant Kashim Chowdhury, 56, of nine counts of fraud on November 9. Chowdhury, from Whitechapel in east London, held eight overlapping full-time public-sector jobs between 2020 and 2023, and in the spring of 2023 he was drawing five full-time salaries at once, with contracted hours totalling 183 hours a week, more hours than there are in seven days.
The Crown Prosecution Service said Chowdhury repeatedly applied for positions in government departments and public bodies between February 2020 and September 2023 while concealing that he already had full-time employment. His employers included Tower Hamlets Council, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department of Health and Social Care, the UK Health Security Agency, the Department for Business and Trade, the Food Standards Agency and the Home Office, with each job paying between £38,000 and £53,000 a year. He was paid about £350,000 in total, of which more than £284,000 was found to have been fraudulently earned.
Prosecutors told the court he used remote working and sick-leave arrangements to juggle the roles. The case came to light through the government's National Fraud Initiative, a data-matching programme that checks public-sector payroll records for anomalies. After deliberating for about seven hours, the jury unanimously found him guilty of eight counts of fraud by false representation and one count of fraud by failing to disclose information.
The judge said Chowdhury faced a very significant custodial sentence and refused him bail; a sentencing date has yet to be fixed. CPS specialist prosecutor Sarah Melo said he had deliberately concealed the true extent of his employment so he could be paid for multiple full-time jobs at the same time, and that prosecutors would seek to recover his fraudulent earnings through Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings.
(Source: Crown Prosecution Service)
Source: Crown Prosecution Service
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于伦敦南部的 Southwark 刑事法庭大楼，本案在此审理。照片：Christopher Hilton 摄，CC BY-SA 2.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: Southwark Crown Court in south London, where the case was heard. Photo by Christopher Hilton, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
