Two fraudsters conned more than £1.5million from a council for fake lift repairs - including work in a building due to be demolished. Stephen Johnson, 62, and Stuart Wickham, 40, swindled Greenwich Council for work that never took place and even for a job in an abandoned building scheduled for imminent demolition.
Over six years the authority in south east London was charged for a string of phoney repairs, with Johnson passing fictitious jobs to a contractor, who was in turn paying him backhanders. Investigators found six lifts, which had only recently been refurbished, had been referred for unnecessary repairs at a cost of almost £9,000.
Johnson, who had worked for the council for 25 years, had the power to order repairs on almost 400 lifts in buildings owned by the authority. When investigators examined his work email account, they found a secret folder filled with messages about a particular external contractor being used for lift repairs.
