Jared O'Mara has been jailed for four years for trying to claim thousands of pounds in taxpayer cash to fund an 'extensive' cocaine habit while serving as an MP.
The 41-year-old, who represented Sheffield Hallam between 2017 and 2019, was convicted of six counts of fraud after attempting to claim around £52,000 for work that was never done and jobs that did not exist. O’Mara went on trial for submitting fake invoices to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) between June and August 2019.
Leeds Crown Court heard O’Mara made four claims for a total of £19,400 from a “fictitious” organisation called Confident About Autism South Yorkshire. A jury found he also submitted a false contract of employment for his friend John Woodliff, pretending he worked as a constituency support officer.
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Prosecutor James Bourne-Arton said the fraud was not a victimless crime and that it had an impact on other MPs “because it undermines public trust and confidence in them”.
O'Mara, a former nightclub manager, was cleared of two fraud charges over invoices from another friend, Gareth Arnold, for media 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.
Prosecutors said the total value of the fraud was about £52,000, including Mr Woodliff’s proposed salary of £28,000.
During the trial, the court heard messages between O’Mara and co-defendant Arnold, who was his friend and “chief of staff” when the claims were submitted. Prosecutors said messages included references to money-making schemes, bending the rules, demanding money from Ipsa, deleting records, and abandoning claims for payment that might ring alarm bells.
In a message from April 2019, read in court by Mr Bourne-Arton, Arnold messaged another friend saying: “He’s a few k in debt with a dealer.” In another, Arnold told O’Mara: “You got s***faced before a Look North TV interview and then harassed a female member of staff. It’s you who does cocaine instead of going to Parliament.”
Sentencing O'Mara on Thursday, Judge Tom Bayliss KC told the court that O’Mara had financial difficulties at the time of the fraud “caused by a hedonistic lifestyle fuelled by the consumption of large amounts of vodka and, of course, cocaine”.
The judge told him: “You do indeed have autism spectrum disorder, and cerebral palsy. This has not stopped you from working in the past, nor seeking election as a member of parliament. Nor should it. Everyone in a democracy should be able to participate, including, whatever their disability, putting themselves forward for election as a Member of Parliament.”
The judge said after being diagnosed with autism in February 2018 O’Mara was allowed to employ a support assistant. But, he said: “What you never did … was to avail yourself of the services of Confident About Autism South Yorkshire. You couldn’t, because it simply didn’t exist. The work claimed for in the invoices had never been done. The postcode given for the organisation was a McDonalds fast food restaurant in Sheffield.”
Addressing O'Mara directly, the judge said: “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. 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.”
Arnold was sentenced to 15 months suspended for two years after a jury found him guilty of three fraud charges, but cleared him of a further three. Woodliff was cleared by the jury of having any role in the fraud.
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. Mr Kelly said: “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."
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”. He added: "These circumstances were very difficult circumstances for him to cope with, with his particular disabilities."
O’Mara won Sheffield Hallam for Labour from former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Nick Clegg in 2017, but later left the party after a series of controversies. He stayed in office as an independent MP but did not contest the 2019 general election.
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