A former Labour MP has been found guilty of making fraudulent expenses claims - with the money being used to fund a cocaine habit while in office.
Jared O'Mara was convicted of six counts of fraud after attempting to claim roughly £24,000 of taxpayers' money on his "extravagant lifestyle". The 41-year-old operated as an MP for the Sheffield Hallam constituency from 2017 to 2019.
He went on trial for submitting "dishonest" invoices to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) between June and August 2019. Leeds Crown Court heard how he made four claims for a total of £19,400 from a "fictitious" organisation known as Confident About Autism South Yorkshire.
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He also submitted a false contract of employment for John Woodliff while "pretending" he worked as a constituency support officer. Meanwhile, he was found not guilty of two fraud charges over invoices from a friend, Gareth Arnold, for media and PR work that prosecutors had claimed was never actually carried out.
However, he was convicted of an offence of fraud after emailing Ipsa in February 2020. In the email, he falsely claimed the police investigation into him had been completed and that he was entitled to be paid the two invoices relating to Arnold - totalling to £4,650.
Arnold was found guilty of three fraud charges and cleared of three. Meanwhile, Woodliff was found not guilty of one offence of fraud.
Judge Tom Bayliss KC told O’Mara he must attend court, saying: “I have permitted you until now to attend via video-link, but I’m afraid that indulgence has now ceased.”
Opening the case just over two weeks ago, prosecutor James Bourne-Arton told the jury: “O’Mara viewed Ipsa, and the taxpayers’ money that they administered, as a source of income that was his to claim and use as he wished, not least in the enjoyment of his extensive cocaine habit.”
The court heard that Arnold went to South Yorkshire Police in July 2019 after “reaching a point at which he was no longer willing to participate in the fraud”.
In Arnold’s call to police, played to jurors, he said: “It’s a bit of a tricky one but yesterday I spoke to the 999 service and the mental health crisis team about my employer, who I believe is suffering a severe psychotic episode and has delusions of a conspiracy against him.
“I also believe he has been submitting fake expense claims to the Government very recently.”
Arnold’s conversation with police described O’Mara as “plainly unable to cope with the office he held, in poor mental health and heavily addicted to cocaine that he was abusing in prodigious quantities”, the jury was told.
Nick Price, head of Special Crime and Counter Terrorism at the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “These claims for taxpayers’ money were blatantly false and O’Mara and Arnold knew that full well. O’Mara invented a fictional autism charity and then proceeded to submit fake invoices, hoping they would slip through as legitimate claims.
“Arnold assisted O’Mara in the deception, submitting a number of bogus claims, and was happy to go along with the fraud before eventually coming clean to the police. While serving as a Member of Parliament, O’Mara viewed taxpayers’ money as source of income that was his to claim and use as he wished.
“His actions fell a long way short of the conduct expected of MPs and, quite frankly, taxpayers have the right to expect better.”
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