Trading standards fraudsters jailed and ordered to repay cash

Three men who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit false accounting in a fraud that cost councils in Yorkshire £13.6m were last week given suspended sentences and ordered to pay back the cash they made, the Yorkshire Post has reported.

The fraud at South Yorkshire Trading Standards Unit – operated jointly by Sheffield, Doncaster, Barnsley and Rotherham councils – lasted for five years. The scam was run by the head of the unit, Mike Buckley, and was only revealed after his death from a heart attack in 2005.

The Yorkshire Post said Buckley had set up agreements with the three businessmen defendants – William Whitehead, Paul Liggins and David Abbott – to supply falsely inflated invoices to the trading standards unit in relation to the supply of calibration equipment. Buckley paid the invoices from the unit’s cash but then conspired with the defendants in an arrangement which saw them pay an invoice raised by his unit for non-existent "calibration work".

Under this deal each defendant effectively immediately returned some of the money which Buckley had paid them, allowing him to pass off the re-circulated cash as legitimate income.

Sheffield Council was hit by a shortfall of £5.97m, while the other three councils had liabilities of £7.36m. The unit was closed after the fraud was revealed, with the councils handling the work in-house.