A group of profoundly deaf fraudsters helped a conman scam the government out of hundreds of thousands of pounds by claiming to be working for his bogus companies, a court heard.
Shahab Reza netted £800,000 intended to help some of the country’s most isolated people into fulfilling jobs through his complex fraud.
The 53-year-old from Perivale, who is completely deaf, even drew his wife and doctor son into the con to profit from the Department of Work and Pension ’s Access to Work scheme.
Under the scheme, disabled people have the right to claim money to pay for interpreters or support workers to help them perform their duties, and the cash is reimbursed to their employer. They also have the right to claim expenses an interpreter or support worker has.
Reza, along with his wife Shehnaz, 53, and son Dr Abbas Reza, 27, set up false companies and ‘staffed’ it with a team of deaf employees. Staff then submitted hundreds of invoices for translation and interpreter services that had never been provided, totalling thousands of pounds.
Reza, from George V Way, has admitted orchestrating the fraud. His wife and son, of Merion Avenue, Stanmore, also admitted their part. The family blew the cash on jewellery, holidays and investments, including their plush family home, while their ‘employees’ were given a monthly sum of £400 out of their claims.
Now seven of their former ‘employees’ face trial for their roles, including 37-year-old Vanessa Lopez, from Mandeville Road, Northolt. They each face a single charge of fraud by false representation.
Rosina Cottage, prosecuting, said: “Shehnaz Reza and their son Abbas Reza pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the Department of Work and Pensions’ Access to Work Scheme. There was a fraud against the DWP, there’s no dispute about that, there was a big fraud.
“Access to Work is delivered by Job Centre Plus providing work-related support to those with disabilities – it pays for sign language interpreters to enable the person to access their work environment or assist them to perform tasks with which they have difficulty.”
The prosecutor said every time a claim form was sent stating a deaf person had received a support worker, the claim was false.
Reza met the defendants either on training courses at the UCanDoIt college designed to help people with disabilities into work, or at his local mosque.
Ms Cottage said: “Without them he couldn’t have made the hundreds of thousands of pounds that he did, they were an important part of the fraud. He got them to pretend they were employed by his company or by his wife’s company so they would forge invoiced for them, and these invoices would be submitted along with a dishonest claim form sent by a dishonest employee.
“The Rezas would be paid thousands of pounds, and would pay their employees £400 to keep their mouth shut and their eyes alert."
The DWP eventually hired a forensic accountant to investigate the Reza family, who concluded that all of their companies were not viable in real life and were merely a vehicle to receive money from the access to work scheme and launder it through these various companies.
The seven defendants admit filling out the forms, but claim they did not really know what they were signing. Some said they believed they were signing for interpreter services that may or may not have been provided at some point in the future.
Others claimed their English was too poor to understand the forms, and were just following Reza’s instructions.
Despite having no practical role, they were given titles like ‘accounts and operations manager’, ‘marketing and sales managers’ or ‘web editor’.
Ms Cottage said: "As you will see, they had no real roles, it’s just gobbledegook – but the same declaration is signed again and again and again."
Lopez and fellow defendants Rolana Molevicuite, 42, Ahsan Naseer, 30, Diana Ioannou, 38, Khima Thapa, 33, Elita Kivite, 28, and Syed Rizvi, 27 all deny conspiracy to defraud.
The trial at Southwark Crown Court continues.
