back to article Online tax scam gang get 40 years

A gang of Ukrainian scammers were sentenced to a total of 40 years in prison on Friday for a a multi-million pound tax scam. The gang created thousands of fake identities and then used them to claim tax rebates from the Inland Revenue. In total they submitted 1,600 online self-assessment tax returns and claimed £8m in rebates …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Professional El Reg ?

    The HMRC link contains a phot of the criminals in a hot tub - what restraint shown by El Reg !

    What they don't mention is, aside from the £360,000 in cash recovered, what happened to the rest of the money ( i.e. £7640000) ? Surely, they indicate how they are going after much of this missing cash (e.g. selling the expensive cars etc.).

  2. The_Police!
    Coat

    Flash Cars

    but could they also be done for not parking correctly in a bay?

    Mines the one with the 'Traffic Warden' t-shirt.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That's how they got them in the end

      Catching these people cannot possibly have been the result of the Met doing anything, this MUST have been accidental. So enforcement of an unpaid parking ticket with accidental discovery is more likely..

      Unless, of course, they were taking pictures of normal London monuments. As we all know, that gets acted upon immediately.

      Yeah, I'm in a sarcastic mood. Deal with it.

  3. Steve X
    Flame

    And the rest

    If the revenue are so incompetent that it's that easy to steal £8m from them, we have to assume that this gang is just the tip of the iceberg. I shudder to think how much of our tax money is being stolen in other scams every day.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Oh dear ...

      I always give 419ers the account number and sort code of the Bank of England account that I pay my tax into. This is on the assumption that anyone trying to take money *out* will be calling down the demons of hell on themselves.

      Now i'm not so sure.

      1. Dom 3

        419 modus operandi

        <sigh> The 491ers do not, in general, do anything with your bank account details. They ask for them to establish credibility. That is all.

        1. Anonymous John

          Not always.

          Sometimes they "flash" the account with money from a phished bank account, and ask the victim to send most of it on by Western Union.

          The phishing victim eventually gets his money back, leaving the scam victim out of pocket.

    2. Anonymous John

      They claimed £8million.

      But the amount repaid was £4.5million. About half of the bogus claims were identified as such, and stopped.

      Self Assessment means that returns have to be accepted, subject to a later enquiry. So almost all online returns result in an automatic repayment of overpaid tax.

      There are safeguards built into the system, and in view of the sophisticated nature of the scam, seems to have worked quite well.

  4. Hedley Phillips

    They come over here

    Taking our criminals jobs....

  5. Gerrit Hoekstra
    Flame

    Hard to feel sorry for IT-illiterate HMRC

    How disingenuous that HMRC pretends that this is a massive victory over fraud! Their incompetence for allowing this scale of simple, repeated fraud in the first instance, is gobsmacking.

    I look forward to the new government cost-cutting measures on HMRC staff with window desks.

  6. Mark C 2

    Title

    ...and they will be deported once they've served their porridge?

    1. Antony Riley
      Thumb Down

      Citizenship

      Presumably after spending 5 years in the country they're entitled to citizenship like everyone else.

      One hopes the sentences are such that they can be kicked out of the country when they get out for good behavior in a couple of years.

  7. Stefing
    FAIL

    Actual slammer time

    So the 40 years of the headline works out at up for parole in 2 years?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Crime doesn't pay...

    Um, yeah it does actually and pretty well at that. 2 years tops is all any one individual is likely to be in for and that's not a bad trade off for a couple of hundred grand is it? Is it? Sore bum not permitting.

    What the hell am I doing with my life? I could be living a playboy lifestyle, driving flash cars, parachuting out of planes and wearing peculiarly unfashionable* clothes. If only I knew how to do it. Damnit. I'm just not geeky^ enough.

    * even more so

    ^ or smart

  9. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Not so flash

    Sorry but those are crap cars. A Cayenne? Barf, if you're gonna spend for a Porsche, buy a proper Porsche. And don't get me started on the Range Rover. They should have bought some Corvettes, BMW M3, a nice Mercedes SLK, the list goes on and on.

  10. obsolete
    Black Helicopters

    How did they get Caught?

    How did they get Caught? Is there a Reg article on that?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Just an observation...

    ... that even "geeky" Russian women are right fit, eh?

  12. Simon B
    WTF?

    21 months to four years' imprisonment?!!!

    21 months to four years' imprisonment ?

    How WANK is that! I'm in the wrong f'king job

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