Former Labour MP Jared O’Mara has been jailed for four years after being found guilty of fraud to fund his “extensive” cocaine habit.
O’Mara, who represented Sheffield Hallam until June 2019, was convicted of six counts of fraud after trying to claim around £24,000 of taxpayers’ money for work that was never carried out and jobs that did not exist.
Leeds Crown Court heard he made four claims for a total of £19,400 from a “fictitious” organisation called Confident About Autism South Yorkshire, which jurors were told referred to his friend John Woodliff.
O’Mara was also found to have submitted a false contract of employment for Mr Woodliff, pretending he worked as a constituency support officer.
Mr Woodliff was cleared by the jury of having any role in the fraud.
Judge Tom Bayliss KC said the fraud was “cynical, deliberate and dishonest”.
He told O’Mara: “I have concluded that, although Jared O’Mara was without doubt suffering from autism at the time of the offences, that does not reduce culpability.
“You, Jared O’Mara, are a highly intelligent man. You were, I am quite sure, able to exercise appropriate judgment, to make rational choices, and to understand the nature and consequences of your actions.
“You may have occasionally behaved bizarrely or demonstrated disordered thought.”
The judge added: “But whether that was caused by your disorder or by your consumption of drugs (or both), is neither here nor there so far as this fraud is concerned.
“You knew perfectly what you were doing with this fraud, you were behaving perfectly rationally, if dishonestly, and you were using your autism diagnosis to extract money from Ipsa to fund your cocaine and alcohol-driven lifestyle. It was deliberate, it was cynical and it was dishonest.”
Mark Kelly KC, defending O’Mara, said he wanted to apologise to his constituents “for his failure to resign in October 2017” when controversial comments he made online before becoming an MP were revealed.
“When he felt that he was being hounded by the media, whether that is the case or not, he felt under pressure from the media for certain circumstances that had come to light,” Mr Kelly said.
He told the court O’Mara was “an inadequate individual to cope with the stresses and strains of public life” and “resorted to taking drugs, alcohol and distancing himself in many respects from those that were around him”.
“These circumstances were very difficult circumstances for him to cope with, with his particular disabilities,” Mr Kelly added.
O’Mara, a former nightclub manager, was found not guilty of two fraud charges over invoices from another friend, Gareth Arnold, for media and PR work that prosecutors claimed was never carried out.
But he was convicted of an offence of fraud after emailing Ipsa in February 2020, falsely claiming the police investigation into him had been completed and he was entitled to be paid the two invoices relating to Arnold, which totalled £4,650.
Arnold, who became O’Mara’s chief of staff in June 2019, was found guilty of three fraud charges and cleared of three. He was handed a 15-month sentence suspended for two years.
It is a remarkable fall for O’Mara, who stunned the political world at the 2017 general election by ousting former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg from what was a safe Liberal Democrat seat.
He left the Labour Party following a series of controversies, including claims of sexual harassment, staff resignations and sackings in addition to complaints from constituents.
During his trial it emerged that on an almost daily basis O’Mara would consume 5g of cocaine, drink a bottle of vodka and smoke 60 cigarettes.
O’Mara, who has cerebral palsy, had initially been seen as a disability rights campaigner and became an advocate for the cause but the court heard that he did little work for his constituents and rarely showed up to his local office in Sheffield or parliament.
