Two Romanians stole hundreds of thousands of pounds from UK taxes and child benefits

The indictment drawn up by the prosecutor at the Bucharest Court of Appeal ordered the trial in preventive detention of two defendants, accused of illegal access to the computer system on a continuous basis, computer fraud on a continuous basis, and money laundering on a continuous basis.

The two defendants are accused of having unlawfully accessed Government Gateway accounts between September 2023 and January 2025, which are personal accounts for the collection of taxes and child benefits made available by the British Government to British citizens and persons with the right of residence in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, with each defendant fraudulently obtaining £495,040.13 and £921,467.3 respectively from the British authorities.

„Specifically, the defendants’ actions consisted of registering fictitious employers in the UK Tax Agency’s systems and in the PAYE (Pay as you earn) tax return application, registering a large number of individuals for a personal tax account, and making fraudulent claims for income tax and other tax refunds. The money fraudulently obtained from the UK Tax Agency was transferred to bank accounts held or controlled by the persons under investigation, and was subsequently transferred to other bank accounts or withdrawn in cash from ATMs,” the Bucharest Court of Appeal Prosecutor’s Office said on Wednesday.

In order to identify the perpetrators and obtain the evidence necessary to prove the criminal activity, a European cooperation agreement was concluded with the authorities of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland through Eurojust. The activities were carried out with the support of members of the UK investigation team and police officers from the IGPR, the Economic Crime Investigation Directorate.

The case was sent to the Bucharest Tribunal for trial with the proposal to maintain the preventive detention measure ordered against the defendants, as well as the measures by which movable and immovable property and sums of money belonging to the defendants were seized, up to the amount of the damage attributed to each of the defendants.