A man has been jailed for pretending to be a property manager for a Greggs chain to con a city council out of £710,000 in Covid grants.
Aftab Baig, 47, from Glasgow, has been jailed for four years for the fraud, which saw fraudulent claims made against all of Leeds’ 32 branches of popular bakery chain, Greggs. The claims were made at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, when local councils were able to provide funding to businesses affected by national lockdowns.
Baig was jailed on Tuesday, with the judge saying that he had “defrauded the Government at a time of national crisis”.
Leeds Crown Court heard that the man and others he was working with had contacted Leeds City Council in May 2020 claiming to be a group property manager at Greggs head office.
He had sent an “authentic” looking email from a fake “Greggs corporate” email address and included a list of all Greggs outlets in Leeds, a judge heard.
It asked for business rates numbers for Leeds branches, details which the sender said he could not access himself due to lockdown.
Baig and others he was working with used the details to apply for rates relief from the small business grant fund, a scheme set up by the Government to help small businesses stay afloat during the pandemic.
The court heard Baig, who had no links to Greggs and was not employed by them, ultimately swindled the council out of £710,000 through the fraud and arranged for the money to go into the bank account of his own food takeaway business.
The council realised the claims were fraudulent five days later and the account was frozen. While most of the money was later returned to the local authority, more than £90,000 was left outstanding.
Baig was arrested in Glasgow in July 2020 by Police Scotland officers and £16,000 was found at his house, as well as forged remittance slips which officers believed he was planning to use to persuade the bank to return the frozen money.
Baig was found guilty of three counts of fraud in February.
The court heard he took advantage of a system set up in lockdown to deal with claims “quickly and with minimal security checks” to cause minimal disruption to businesses.
Jailing Baig for four years, Judge Guy Kearl, the Recorder of Leeds, said: “This was a disgraceful attempt to deprive the Government of monies which were in short supply at a time of extreme public anxiety and crisis.”
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