Not the brightest fraudster…

A lot of us will have to take taxis to meet clients. Some may occasionally take a taxi whilst others may take them on a regular basis. But what about over £90,000 worth of taxi fares?

Yes, that does seem a lot but for a (now ex) employee of Deloitte in London it seemed reasonable. Or at least reasonable in the sense that he fraudulently claimed non-existent taxi fares and false professional subscriptions which together totalled £95,540.

Gurgyan Singh Kaley’s career at Deloitte started well. He joined the company on a salary of £54,000 and had a great career ahead of him.

Unfortunately for him, he got greedy and over 39 months submitted false and fraudulent claims for expenses.

These expenses were mostly taxi rides and not just one or two taxi rides. No, he claimed for approximately 1,000 fake journeys.

Mr Kaley was probably not the brightest individual as that was an incredibly high number of journeys and was bound to raise suspicions. In the last 7 weeks before he was found out he claimed for 383 journeys which works out at a clearly suspicious 11 taxi journeys per working day.

He was eventually caught out when auditors noticed the suspicious expenses and he recently appeared in court where he was found guilty of fraud.

He was spared an immediate prison sentence but faces a 2-year suspended sentence. He must also pay Deloitte £75,000 within 12 months or serve 21 months in prison.

A Deloitte spokesperson said, “We note the outcome of the hearing and are satisfied with the final decision. Deloitte has a zero-tolerance approach to fraud and we expect all our people to adhere to our strict guidelines of conduct. Anyone found to have acted in bad faith will, of course, face immediate and appropriate action.”