Fraudster brought to justice over £650k tax scam

Date: 5th August 2010

An HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) investigation has lead to the jailing of a tax fraudster for three and half years.

Ukrainian Dmytro Shepel was handed the sentence for his part in a scam which abused the self-assessment tax system.

According to HMRC, Mr Shepel registered 350 fake names for self-assessment and made claims for 218 of them, it total attempting to steal almost £650,000.

The fraudster, who entered the UK under a false Lithuanian identity, used a counterfeit passport to open 74 bank accounts to receive the fraudulent payments.

Simon Grunwell, assistant director of HMRC criminal investigations, said: "This was a criminal plot which deprived the nation's public services of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

"HMRC takes fraud extremely seriously. In common with commercial financial organisations, we face attempts by individuals and organised criminals to steal from us and we have processes in place to detect and counter fraudulent repayments claims."

Posted by Thomas Fletcher