Fraud can cause untold damage to people's lives - not only from the loss of money but also the betrayal of trust.
From benefit scams to cheating the elderly and vulnerable, it is a devious crime that comes in many forms - and often committed by those you'd least expect.
Manchester’s courts are no stranger to these offences and the havoc they cause. Here, the Manchester Evening News looks back on the recent cases involving extraordinary levels of deceit and deception.
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Ali Bana Mohamed
Fraudster Ali Bana Mohamed cheated the child benefit and tax credit system out of more than £1.7 million pounds - with claims for 188 FAKE children. He used people he knew from Birmingham and London to assist in the scam. This involved submitting bogus claims in about 70 different names.
They got away with the brazen scheme until suspicions were aroused by the HMRC. The tax office spotted that the same two telephone numbers were repeatedly calling the tax credits claims call centre in connection with seemingly unrelated claims and a dedicated DWP investigation was launched.
In March, six of the fraudsters received jail sentences totalling more than 13 years. One of them had his term suspended.
Mastermind Mohamed, 40, of Epping Street, Hulme, Manchester, was jailed for three and a half years in January after admitting 29 fraud offences. He was already serving 16 years for drugs and immigration offences and the judge, who ordered the sentence to run consecutively, said it would have been longer but for his existing sentence.
His fraud was targeted on the UK’s tax credit and child benefit system. A dedicated investigation led to establishing that Ali Bana Mohamed had advanced child benefit and tax credit claims in approximately 70 different adult names over a nine year period between April 2007 and July 2016.
All the fraudulent claims advanced by Ali Bana Mohamed were made on the basis that the adult was looking after the named children and was entitled to child benefit and tax credits.
Kevin Slack, prosecuting said: “Those children were fictitious. In all, 188 different children, whom were entirely fictitious, were claimed for in these claims. In total, £1,766,594.87 was paid out in relation to these fraudulent claims, comprising £345,642.80 in child benefit payments and £1,420,952.07 in tax credit payments.”
Ellisha Wilson
Ellisha Wilson lost her job as a PCSO after she falsely claimed that she had not been paid her wages - and even lied about the money being transferred to Jamaica.
The 26-year-old duped Merseyside Police into paying her £1,600 monthly wage twice, a court heard. She received an emergency payment from the force as well as her usual wage, but did not come clean despite being given several chances by senior colleagues.
She claimed that she had not been paid her wages, £1,598.82, in September last year. She was issued with an emergency payment of that money with the agreement that if she had been paid, she would not be paid the following month.
She realised she had not been paid in October so she contacted the pay department and continued to claim that she had not received the pay for September and they sent another further payment of £1,598.82.
As the finance department tried to establish what had happened to the money, Wilson's supervisor tried to assist her by 'giving her numerous opportunities to provide details to payroll'. She also handed in wrong documents and claimed that the money that had been paid had been taken from her account and transferred to Jamaica.
The production order from her bank account was then produced in order to prove that she was lying. It was at that point she admitted she had received the wages, the court heard.
At Sefton Magistrates' Court in June, Wilson admitted fraud by false representation. The court heard the missing money has since been accounted for.
Wilson, of Ashton-in-Makerfield near Wigan , was sentenced to a 16-week curfew from 7pm to 7am. She will also have to complete 20 rehabilitation days and was ordered to pay £180 in costs and a victim surcharge.
Mason Crozier
Serial conman Mason Crozier taunted his victims by admitting 'I'm a grafter' after stealing cars and vans worth almost £50,000. He tricked several people into letting him drive away in the vehicles they were selling by pretending an internet bank transfer was about to be made.
One on occasion he posed as an undercover GMP officer and gave his victim a fake collar number to persuade him to let him drive off in an Audi A3 worth £7,250. In total Crozier, 21, stole six vehicles- including a Ford Transit van worth £13,000 and a BMW worth £3,500 - over a nine month period during lockdown in 2020 and 2021, Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court heard.
The first offence took place just days after he was released from a young offenders institute on licence having been sentenced in February 2020 for a string of almost identical crimes. After one victim, from whom Crozier stole a Renault Trafic van, made numerous attempts to contact him the conman texted: "Look pal, stop ringing. I've done this to hundreds of people.”
Another text, sent to the owner of the Audi A3 read: "OK, I'm a grafter. I will give you the car back. It's not worth the headache. Give me a couple of hours I will get it back to you." The car was never returned, the court heard.
After stealing £50 of diesel from a petrol station in Northenden by persuading staff he would pay via bank transfer Crozier threatened the owner by saying he would get a 'load of kids' to go round and strip the shelves. Gwen Henshaw, prosecuting, said the majority of Crozier's victims had advertised their vehicles for sale on either Facebook or Gumtree.
She described how the 'noted fraudster' would employ the 'usual charade' of showing the victims a banking app on his mobile phone which appeared to show a money transfer was 'pending', before persuading them to allow him to drive off. He was arrested in Bradford, West Yorks, on August 8, 2021 driving a BMW he had stolen six days earlier.
Crozier, from Wythenshawe but currently residing in HMP Doncaster, was jailed for three years in June after pleading guilty to eight counts of fraud.
Matthew Normyle
Matthew Normyle was described by a judge as a ‘conniving, cold and callous’ fraudster after he conned his friends, work colleagues and an ex-partner out of a total of £97,000 in a fake investment scheme.
Normyle, 42, invited seven people to invest in his boiler business, which he claimed would ensure them modest returns after 90 days, whilst he was living in Rochdale.
However, he repeatedly came up with excuses, and his investors were left significantly out of pocket, Manchester Crown Court heard.
Over the course of two-and-a-half years, he took a total of £97,250. He did pay back one friend to the tune of £10,000, but that was shy of £15,000 of what they had already given him.
Normyle was tracked down to Manchester Airport in May last year, and admitted to the police that he had targeted his friends as he ‘knew they trusted him’. He went on to voluntarily admit further victims of his fraud.
Normyle, of Lord Street, Morecambe, was jailed for two years and 10 months after pleading guilty to eight offences of fraud by false representation in January.
Yvette Newton
‘Devious' fraudster Yvette Newton swindled more than £55,000 and splashed thousands of pounds on B&Q orders. 'Highly manipulative' Newton, 54, of Pennine Vale, Shaw, left bosses 'horrified' and 'sick' after stealing from TMJ Contractors, in Ashton-under-Lyne, over a five-year period.
Minshull Street Crown Court heard Newton began transferring money from the company accounts, disguising a string of payments to her own bank account as going to payees and contractors. Between September 8, 2015, and 16 August, 2020, she spent a total of £55,309.23 from the company.
During her time working for the contracting firm, where she was earning £33,000 a year, she transferred £17,485.70 to her own Santander bank account, as well as a further £11,539.49 to a Nationwide account, also in her name. She also moved £6,213.97 to her unsuspecting daughter's account, £611 into her husband's account and then £1,948.98 on unauthorised wage additions or expenses.
As well as this, money was funnelled to be spend on various unauthorised expenses, including a skip hire, a DVLA payment for her husband's car, over £5,000 in non-business purchases at B&Q, which included buying a lawn mower and dehumidifier and over £5,000 in unexplained cash withdrawals. In May this year Newton was jailed for 16 months after admitting fraud by abuse of position.
Cheryl Ann Stringer
Cheryl Ann Stringer stole from a terminally-ill woman she was supposed to be caring for. She has since been ordered to pay her family more than £25,000 - or face more time in prison.
Stringer, 54, defrauded Anne Blackham, then aged 82, buying a new oven, a tumble dryer, candles, jewellery, clothing and a tablet. She also had new carpets and curtains put in at home.
It happened between November 2020 and January 2021, when Stringer was one of four members of staff supposed to be looking after Mrs Blackham at a Stockport care home.
Mrs Blackham had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, having moved to the home in December 2019. She passed away on January 31, 2021.
Last November, Stringer was jailed for two years for dishonestly making false representations to make gain. Sentencing her, Recorder Timothy Hannan QC described the case as 'an appalling case of cynical greed'. He said Stringer had stolen money from her victim at the rate of nearly £2,500 a week.
In January this year, during a Proceeds of Crime Act hearing at Minshull Street Crown Court, Judge John Edwards ordered Stringer to repay more than £25,000 to Mrs Blackham's estate - the amount taken, plus interest.
The judge also warned Stringer, of Woodstock Crescent, Woodley, Stockport, that a six-month prison sentence would be imposed if she defaulted on the payments.
James Hall
Financial controller James Hall was described by his boss as a ‘great asset to the company’ and was ‘trusted implicitly ’. However, his devious offending was laid bare when he transferred himself £6.7 million from the cash reserves to ‘secure the financial security of his wife and children’, despite already earning more than £80,000 per year.
The 49-year-old then lost most of the money gambling on the FTSE 100 index, Bolton Crown Court heard. Hall, of Bolton , had worked for Merseyside-based shopfitting business Vale UK since 1996 and had become good friends with the managing director Paul Henerty.
Mr Henerty had planned on making him a director. When the business moved to electronic banking in 2007, Hall was authorised to pay bills and make transfers online. He was also responsible for authorising the company’s expenses.
In 2012, Hall approached Mr Henerty to ask for a loan of £250,000 to help buy a better house closer to his daughter’s school. Mr Henerty agreed but following this, Hall transferred himself £6.7 million over the next three years.
His fraud was uncovered during an accounting audit in March 2015. When confronted, Hall said that he had taken the money and gambled it on the FTSE 100 to ‘secure the financial security of his wife and children’ but that he had ‘very little left’.
Judge Tom Gilbart jailed Hall, of Eastgrove Avenue, Sharples, for six years. He had previously pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud.
Michaela Reeves
Michaela Reeves was working as a cleaner when she stole £8,400 from a frail elderly lady. The 31-year-old, from Ashton-under-Lyne, stole four cheques from her after finding her bank book in a box by her bed - then deposited them into her own account.
A judge said it was 'difficult, if not impossible, to imagine a more serious breach of trust for a vulnerable old lady in her own home'.
Bolton Crown Court heard she claimed an unnamed man had stolen cheques from the home in Oldham of disabled Olive Watmough during a burglary. Reeves denied theft and four counts of fraud but was found guilty after a trial.
Tragically Mrs Watmough, who was aged in her 80s, passed away before the case reached court. During the scam, Reeves filled out increasing four-figure sums on the Yorkshire Bank payment slips and forged Mrs Watmough's signature.
Three payments - for £1,900, £2,700 and £3,800 - cleared into her account, but the court heard Reeves was caught when bank officials blocked a fourth deposit for £7,800 and began investigating.
When Mrs Watmough found out about the thefts, she was said to be 'devastated' and told police: ''You just don't think someone you trust would do this.''
Reeves, of Wilshaw Grove, was jailed for two years suspended for two years, ordered to complete 200 hours of unpaid work and 20 rehabilitation requirement days in February.
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