Nicholson/Camelia Botnar/Breach Saints and Scroungers

Every year, billions of pounds of our taxes are spent

on those in genuine need of financial help,

money that's a lifeline for people that deserve our support.

Everything was crumbling around me.

But unfortunately, about a billion goes on lining the pockets of

those who aren't entitled to it.

This is just pure greed and nothing else.

But if you cheat the system, you're being watched.

We knew where to look straightaway.

Welcome to the world of Saints And Scroungers.

Saints And Scroungers shines a light on the good

and the bad of our benefits system, and highlights those who

deliberately steal from the public purse.

It's a simple case of need versus greed.

And it's a battle that's fought every day across the UK,

investigators bringing fraudsters to justice and saints fighting

to make sure that people get what they're genuinely entitled to.

Coming up on today's show...

Corrupt council managers who aren't just fiddling expenses

but using fake employees to steal taxpayers' cash.

And out of that, she was making over £100,000?

Well over £100,000, yes. Definitely worth her while.

And we meet a young mother and daughter who get help dealing

with a difficult and troubling disorder.

Because she can't tell us what she wants,

she can't make her feelings known, so she does get very angry.

Being a role model to today's youth is a difficult but important job.

You need to keep them on the straight and narrow,

guide them onto the right path, and it takes someone who's honest,

trustworthy and reliable.

Which is why Peter Nicholson, who built up years of employment at

Newham Council, was given the very coveted title of the

Head of the Youth Offending Team.

In 2011, the fraud unit in Newham won a national award for being the

most effective team in the UK for tracking down benefits cheats.

But I've come to the borough to find out about

a very different kind of fraud...

theft of council funds by its own staff.

Emma Vick is head of Fraud Investigations in Newham.

Tell me about the Youth Offending Team. How does that work?

The Youth Offending Team is a team within the borough whose job

is to rehabilitate young offenders.

And they've got social workers, probation officers and Newham staff

as well, that all work together to do that.

-And they're very successful?

-Very good, yeah.

And they've been going for several years.

It's something that, obviously, Newham's pretty proud of.

We're very proud of it. They started in the year 2000, and we've actually

been complimented on how well we did deal with our young offenders.

OK. Who is the man at the head of that?

-There was a man called Peter Nicholson.

-OK. Tell me about him.

Peter Nicholson's worked for Newham for a long time.

He was actually brought in specially to head up the YOT in 2000,

he took that role on from its inception.

He got an OBE for working for Newham, as well, for services to

Youth Offending, and was seen to be very successful.

Both Nicholson and his team seemed to be on top of their game,

but in 2006, his department, and more specifically,

his finance officer Shirin Bazrcar,

were about to ping on Emma Vick's radar.

A member of staff who worked for the Youth Offending Team had received

some notification from the Inland Revenue.

This showed that her employer was Shirin Bazrcar. She was under

the impression she was employed by Excel Staffing Solutions.

She felt that this may be a conflict of interest.

The member of staff reported this to Peter Nicholson,

who, in turn, reported it to me.

If he hadn't done this, it was quite likely the member of staff

would have reported it to another manager and reported it again.

Hold on a minute. Shirin had two jobs,

one with the council and one running her own employment agency.

By employing youth workers from her own company,

Excel Staffing Solutions,

to work for Newham's Youth Offending Team, Shirin could be potentially

pocketing the commission.

Emma Vick began investigating the allegation.

It turns out it was one of many flying around the department,

and not just about Shirin.

Peter's business trips abroad had cropped up during enquires, as well.

Once we started looking into the Youth Offending Team,

we became aware of some rumours

regarding misappropriation of funds regarding trips to Canada,

and also the employment of ghost employees.

Ghost employees? Spooky.

It seems that Emma had opened up a can of worms, and these were serious

allegations. A ghost employee is someone, real or fake, who's placed

on a payroll system, but doesn't actually work for the council.

When the ghost's wages are paid, the fraudster collects the money.

Back up a minute. Thank you.

One allegation against the finance manager Shirin is

suddenly spawning stories of trips abroad paid for by the council,

and ghost employees. It seems like Peter Nicholson is hiding a few

skeletons behind that OBE, prompting Emma to have a proper rummage around

in the Youth Offending Team's business.

She started by looking into the claims about trips abroad,

and soon discovered a paper trail.

There were three trips to Canada that Peter had taken

and charged to Newham.

The first two trips were Peter and a member of his family.

And then the final trip was Peter, his family,

and personal friends. The invoices from Trailfinders showed the make-up

of the party, so it had the names of

everybody that was travelling to Canada.

On one of the trips, Peter had taken five members of his family

and a friend, David Tuck, who took

three members of his family, as well.

Sounds like the kind of jolly that's too good to be true.

But who in the council agreed to pay for them?

Peter actually told the chief executive that he'd been

invited by the Canadian authorities to represent Newham

and that he could also take some members of staff with him.

He also said that the Canadian authorities would reimburse

Newham for the cost of the trip.

Yeah, family and friends isn't the same as work colleagues, but I guess

if the Canadians are picking up the bill, there's no real harm,

is there? Finance manager Shirin Bazrcar didn't seem to think so.

In relation to the holidays, Shirin Bazrcar didn't actually attend

any of the holidays, but she paid for them with the purchase card.

OK, so Shirin has paid for them but

the council's going to get its money back, right?

I mean, I hope so. Especially when they cost nearly £6,000.

With suspicions rising about taxpayers' money being used to pay

for personal holidays, Emma called in Peter

to be formally interviewed.

When we interviewed Peter Nicholson under caution, he came out with

various stories regarding the authorisation of the trips to Canada.

One story was that Newham had paid for the trip as a reward

for him getting his OBE.

Another story was that the Canadian authorities had requested him

to go and would therefore reimburse us.

OK, well, which one is it?

In his interview under caution, he explained further how the

holidays had been paid for.

He admitted that he'd signed a payment request note

so the trip could be paid for by Newham. But again,

he stated that Newham would get reimbursed.

Nicholson said that the Youth Justice Board had sent him the

invitation to attend meetings and conferences in Canada,

and that he was allowed take up to ten people.

Getting to the bottom of Nicholson's varied excuses fell to

fraud investigator Rashid Bipul.

Peter mentioned a few organisations who

he said would be able to confirm that the conference took place,

but we couldn't actually locate any of these people.

He claimed to have a number of e-mails that actually

proved that these were actually legitimate business trips.

And he was unable to provide any e-mails to prove that these were

legitimate business trips.

So the fact that no-one the fraud investigators spoke to could

back up Nicholson's story was further evidence that this

was a not a job, but a jolly.

But it got worse.

As Rashid dug deeper, he found out that Nicholson had booked

time off during the trip as annual leave,

which suggested that it was a holiday, not a business trip.

They've got the guy in their sights. Now they turn their attention

to Shirin. After all, she was the one paying for all this.

Shirin stated that she'd legitimately used the company

credit card to pay for trips to Canada, as she'd seen

authorisation from Peter's line manager. But that didn't add up

because she'd booked those trips prior to Peter

actually getting authorisation from his line manager.

Unbelievable that despite what seemed like overwhelming evidence,

the pair continue to deny any wrongdoing.

Just trying to decide where I should go on my next holiday.

I fancy skiing in Canada. But unlike Peter Nicholson,

my trip won't be funded by the Newham taxpayer.

Blagging a holiday on expenses is one thing,

allegations of ghost employees, well, that's quite another.

This is what fraud investigator, Emma Vick,

would be looking into next. What would her team uncover?

I went away and spoke to the person he told us would know David Tuck,

and every time I did that, they all confirmed

they had never met David.

For now, though, it's farewell to the fraudsters and thank goodness.

Hello to people we call our saints.

Those in society that help others who are in genuine need

but often too proud, or don't know how,

to claim what's rightfully theirs.

Bringing up kids can be exhausting, tiring

and, quite frankly, drive you round the bend at times.

But no matter what, we try and do the best for our kids.

What about, though, if your kid has a disability and whatever you do,

you just can't provide the environment that they need?

What do you do then?

Like lots of new mothers, Cally Laundon had a tricky job

of balancing the demands of caring for her toddler Madison

and her work as a veterinary nurse.

Even though it was tough, everything was going well, until Cally noticed

that Madison, who'd been born premature, was developing slowly.

When she got to about 18 months, things didn't really

progress a lot from there. the main one was speech.

She didn't really... She started babbling

but didn't continue. Nothing really went from there.

She didn't carry on.

And it wasn't just Madison's

failure to hit key development milestones that concerned Cally.

Her biggest worry was her daughter's behaviour.

I couldn't even just take her round the shops for the day,

go into town and do anything like that because it was always a fight.

If she didn't want to do something, she just wouldn't do it.

Cally's constant battles with Maddy were wearing her down

and affecting her work.

I was starting to struggle a bit with my hours.

I do two 16-hour shifts a week...

Cally was starting to realise she couldn't juggle work

and manage her daughter's needs.

She didn't know whether she was just dealing with a troublesome toddler

or something more serious. And without the diagnosis she needed,

she had no-one to turn to for help.

In desperation, she went to her local child health clinic

and begged them to take her seriously.

And I went in there and said, "Something isn't necessarily right.

"I'm not sure. She's still not talking."

She then actually agreed that we

needed a referral to go and see a consultant, to see

if there was anything going on.

It was great that she was getting a referral

but Cally needed help immediately to manage Madison.

I contacted my health visitor who said that there was

something that Maddy could be referred to, nursery-wise,

that actually would help bring her on a bit,

maybe help with her development.

Cally had never heard of the Camelia Botnar Centre,

a nursery for children with special needs, that unlike many others,

provides support for parents, as well.

They are referred sometimes through the health visitor or

child development centre. They are a mix of preschool children.

Some are speech and language, some are needed to be here

because of social aspects in their lives.

The nursery sounded perfect for a child with Madison's needs.

And straightaway Cally felt like a weight

had been lifted off her shoulders.

Me and her dad went round for a meeting,

instantly felt at home there.

Maddy went straight in and off she went into the class

while we had the interview.

Madison was given a place for two afternoons a week.

We have a key person system,

so there is one person that Madison's mum can go to, or myself.

The highly-trained nursery staff

immediately tackled Madison's behavioural problems.

At the moment, the biggest thing I think is that Madison gets

very frustrated and angry because she can't tell us

what she wants, she can't make her feelings known.

At some points during the afternoon, we might take her off to

the sensory room for some quiet time,

just chill-out time.

At last, Cally was starting to have help from nursery staff who really

seemed to understand Madison.

It was clear that Madison had much more than to deal with than

just communication problems.

The staff at the nursery advised Cally to make this clear to

the consultant who she was due to meet.

They then said in the hospital appointment that they thought that

there was something, but what they decided to do was send in somebody

to observe her at nursery.

Cally was desperate to find out what was wrong with her daughter

and began researching conditions on the internet.

She soon narrowed down the possibilities

and put her fears straight to the doctor.

I just came out and said, "Do you think she's autistic?

"Is that what you are looking at?"

and she said yes.

Following Madison's diagnosis,

it was the nursery that helped Cally with one of the biggest

problems she had following Madison's diagnosis - how to cope financially.

What I was earning, with the little bit of child tax credits

I was getting, was pretty much what we were using to live on,

give or take a little bit.

The nursery team arranged for a benefits expert from the

local authority to meet Cally and help her with a claim.

When I first met Cally, the first thing I did was actually sit

and take the family history.

The fact that she worked,

she believed, actually stopped her from claiming any form of benefit

other than perhaps working tax credits or child tax credits

and child benefit. So when I worked out the criteria was met for DLA,

'then I explained the process to her and requesting the DLA form,'

going through it, waiting for the decision.

We did get awarded disability living allowance for Madison at home,

which meant that I could relax a little bit about money and I could

drop some of the hours that I was working.

With the extra time Madison got to spend with her mum

and at the nursery, her development progressed really quickly

and staff devised a learning plan to help her communicate more clearly.

They started introducing something called PECKS with her, which is

picture communication. So she'll actually start being able to tell

people, "I'm having a tantrum because I want a drink,

"but I can't tell you I want a drink."

So she can give them a picture.

Would you like something else?

More raisins?

For Cally, Jill and the rest of the staff at the nursery are

the reason why she's been able to cope with having an autistic child.

They've had quite long chats with me regarding choices of mainstream

schools or special education schools.

I've also thought about deferring Madison's school year.

The nursery have offered to keep her another year if I do that,

to give her a bit more time to develop to be ready for school.

There'll be plenty more challenges for Cally as Madison grows older,

but knowing that there's someone there that can help with her

specific needs means that the future's a lot brighter

for both of them.

Well, that's enough good news for now. Let's return to our scroungers.

In 2006, Newham's fraud unit started an internal investigation

into the council's Youth Offending Team.

Investigators suspected that the head of the department,

Peter Nicholson OBE, in collusion with his finance manager

Shirin Bazrcar, had been using council money for personal trips.

So at this stage, you're aware that

-Peter Nicholson is getting subsidised, free travel...

-Yeah.

..around the world. Very nice, too.

What I'm not sure about is why Shirin Bazrcar is signing off on

this stuff, because it's her name on the sheet, it seems,

but she doesn't seem to be getting anywhere near as much from it,

-just all the risk.

-It did look as if she was doing the signing off

and not getting any of the benefit.

From the team's investigation into misuse of council cash

for personal holidays, it was unclear if Shirin was involved.

However, when the team turned their attention to the more serious

allegations of ghost employees,

she came firmly under the spotlight again.

As well as being a member of staff on the Youth Offending Team,

Shirin was also a director of Excel Staffing Solutions...

..a job agency that supplied temporary staff to the department.

The agency, which has since ceased trading,

did provide genuine staff to the Youth Offending Team

but it was fictitious workers that Emma was interested in.

We wanted to investigate the allegations into the ghost employees.

There were several names flying around at the time, so I went and

found the time sheets and the invoices in relation to both

Sharon Browne and David Tuck.

Both Sharon Browne and David Tuck were temporary members

of staff with Newham, which meant that they were actually employed

by employment agencies who got paid and, in turn, paid them.

David Tuck? I've heard that somewhere before.

And so had Emma. Tuck was none other than Nicholson's ski-buddy

on his trips to Canada.

The investigating team immediately started to look

more closely at his background.

We found out that David Tuck was in fact a self-employed lift engineer.

He had his own company called Lads Construction. In addition to this,

later on we found out he was a close personal friend of Peter's.

Emma could see from payroll evidence that he'd been working

for the Youth Offending Team, but when she asked other people

in the department about him, it was clear that he kept a low profile.

Our main investigation focused on the fact that nobody had ever met him.

We spent a lot of time talking to people in Newham,

as nobody had seen him.

So nobody in Newham Council remembered Tuck

apart from Nicholson?

That sounds really dodgy. What about the other name

investigators had come across, Sharon Browne?

In relation to Sharon Browne, we visited the employment agency

and retrieved the personnel file that they held for her.

In that file, there was her application form that showed

the colleges she'd attended, previous work experience,

and home address and national insurance number.

Emma's colleague, fraud investigator Rashid Bipul, didn't waste any time

following up this lead.

We went to the university

and found that Sharon Browne had never actually studied there.

We checked with national insurance

and found out that the national insurance number didn't even exist.

We checked with our local borough.

She was registered as being resident in Newham.

She didn't exist in Newham at all.

Browne wasn't an actual person,

but on paper, she was made to look real.

Emma's team were now convinced that both Browne

and Tuck were ghost employees.

They suspected the pair had never lifted a finger for the council

but they were being paid.

The question is, how much?

Sharon Browne was paid around £43,000.

David Tuck was paid just under £100,000,

that included a redundancy payment of just over £3,000.

It was looking like the fraudsters had ripped off the council

to the tune of nearly £150,000.

The big question for Emma was now, who was paying out all this cash?

The majority of the time sheets had been signed by Peter Nicholson.

Some had also been signed by Shirin Bazrcar.

They were both involved.

At last, the time sheets provided a direct link between

the prime suspects and a major fraud.

This was a result, but Emma's team still needed more evidence and they

got another major breakthrough when they decided to call in an expert.

We sent off the application pack to a handwriting expert with

some samples of all of the known suspects' handwriting.

The result came back that, actually, Peter had completed

the whole of the application pack.

I beg your pardon?

Peter Nicholson himself had filled out the application form belonging

to the ghost employee.

Surely no excuses could save him now.

I reckon the Youth Offending Team might need to change its name.

In that corrupt department, it wasn't just the kids

who were crossing the line.

But with evidence mounting against Peter Nicholson OBE,

the investigators still needed to find proof

of Shirin's involvement in the fraud.

Shirin must have been making a tidy sum of money, creaming a percentage

of what came into her agency. But where were the actual wages going?

Wanting to find out, the pair were called back in for an interview.

Shirin was finally interviewed in November 2009.

She was quite calm through the interview and she suggested that she

did everything legitimately,

and having had higher authorisation to do them.

Shirin said that she could provide further evidence to show that

David Tuck legitimately worked for us.

She said that she could provide with time sheets and e-mails and so on.

She never did.

Rashid had spoken to a lot of people in the Youth Offending Team

and external agencies that worked that with the team,

and no-one had recognised the name David Tuck.

So now, Shirin and Nicholson were the only two people

in the whole of Newham Council that could confirm Tuck had

worked there, and neither of them could provide evidence that he had.

Emma's team felt they had enough evidence on Peter

and Shirin to charge them

with conspiracy to defraud the council and money laundering.

And just before the trial, her fraud team

got some interesting information

when Shirin gave the court documents that she hoped would clear her name.

Another employee's name bubbled to the surface, a gentleman called

Alex Brown. And the investigators decided to look him up.

As part of the trial, Shirin Bazrcar had to serve a defence statement.

In her defence statement, she mentioned that the money that ended

up in her bank account was in relation to an employee

called Alex Brown. I searched the computer systems

and found several time sheets in the name of Alex Brown.

Each time sheet had a personal home address for Alex Brown.

Myself and Rashid decided to drive to the address and see who

we could find there.

When we got there, the door was answered by an elderly lady.

We asked the lady if she knew Alex Brown and she said she'd

never heard of him and she confirmed that he'd never lived there.

We also asked her if she knew Shirin Bazrcar and she confirmed that Shirin

was actually her daughter.

Hold on a second. Her daughter?

So Alex Brown was another ghost,

but how much money did he steal from Newham and where did it go?

So you eventually looked through Shirin Bazrcar's work computer.

What did you find on that?

I was going through the payment schedules in relation to

all of the people we've ever employed at the YOT,

and I just happened to notice the surname that

I knew was connected to Shirin's home address where her mother lived.

And lo and behold, that was her sister.

So then I went and checked with anybody at the Youth Offending Team,

did they think we'd ever employed her? And obviously we hadn't.

So that was the sister, another revenue stream we've got coming out.

So there we have it. That's the reason that Shirin Bazrcar

was signing all of this off, is because she herself had set up

two ghost employees that she could siphon money

out of the borough with, and out of that she was making over £100,000.

Well over £100,000, yes. Definitely worth her while.

Bingo. You see, sometimes it seems that all you need to do

is dangle a carrot. And in Shirin's case, it was her own

defence statement which gave Emma the clue to her involvement

in the whole sorry tale.

And this new evidence revealed even more taxpayers' money

that had been spent on lavish lifestyles

instead of the young people of Newham.

In April 2012, Peter Nicholson, Shirin Bazrcar

and David Tuck went on trial.

All three pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to defraud and

money laundering. But after a lengthy eight-week trial,

they were found guilty.

This was a long, complex and costly investigation.

I started looking at it in December 2006,

and we eventually went to trial in April 2012.

The judge sentenced Peter Nicholson to five-and-a-half years in prison.

He sentenced Shirin Bazrcar to four years in prison,

and David Tuck to 18 months.

The total loss to Newham as a result of this fraud was just over £280,000

Thanks to the hard work of Newham's fraud team, funds that were

being diverted now found their way to people that really needed them.

And although the ghost employees may not have been real,

the sentences handed down to this trio certainly were.