The former deputy chief executive of Accord Group has been jailed for conning the association out of £325,000 to buy sandwich bars.
Lakhbir Jaspal at Birmingham Crown Court today admitted eight counts of fraud by abuse of position and was jailed for three years.
According to Inside Housing:
“Mr Jaspal, who earned £147,000 a year as deputy chief executive of the 13,000-home association, submitted a series of invoices between 2011 and 2012 from a bogus firm he created purely to steal from Accord. Mr Jaspal fabricated six bills, the largest for £97,980.
Accord identified the fraud and confronted Mr Jaspal when two more invoices emerged from a mystery firm called ‘Serus’ in May this year requesting payment of £67,860.
Mr Jaspal immediately admitted the theft and the matter was then passed to West Midlands Police when the full extent of the fraud emerged. Mr Jaspal resigned from his post and left Accord in June.
Police and Accord investigators probed payments made to the company and found Jaspal had bought ‘Serus Ltd’ online for a few hundred pounds just weeks before the first fraudulent invoice was lodged in August 2011.”