A former employee at the British Insurance Brokers’ Association (BIBA) has been jailed for 18 months after pleading guilty to six counts of fraud by abuse of position.
Gumukh Shehri, 33, from Woolwich, was found guilty of defrauding his former employer out of £25,000 from November 2013-November 2015. As a result he was given 18 months in custody for each of the six charges – with the sentences to run concurrently.
According to a report at City AM, Shehri paid himself £13,248 in three instalments using cheques that were written to a fictional company called URM, which he claimed, at the time, was a property management company. This set up a decoy for him to pay the cheques into his own personal account.
In addition, Shehri inflated his own salary with unauthorised bonus payments taking advantage of his position as financial controller – his bonus payments totalled £11,000.
As soon as the fraud was discovered it was reported to the police – and by this point Shehri had already been dismissed from his position after an internal investigation based on an unrelated matter. He was arrested in January this year.
The publication quotes PC James Harvey from the City of London police as stating that the offences represented a “significant abuse of the trust placed in him by his employers” and that the sentence should serve as a “severe deterrent to anyone who thinks this type of offence is a victimless crime.”
Related Stories:
Accountant faces jail for BIBA raid
