Two sisters have splurged on expensive clothes and holidays after committing a ‘sophisticated’ £446,000 Gift Aid fraud while running Girl Guides groups.
Sara Barnbrook, 54, and Jean Barnbrook, 51, transferred hundreds of thousands of pounds to their personal bank accounts after falsely claiming money from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), Leeds Crown Court was told.
The sisters ran two girl guides and a brownies group in Leeds but betrayed the trust placed in them by using the charity in the criminal scheme.
Over six and a half years they made Gift Aid claims relating to £1.9 million in ‘completely fictitious’ donations, prosecutor Angus Macdonald said.
Sara admitted defrauding the government revenue and was jailed for three years, and Jean was jailed for two and a half years after pleading guilty to money laundering.
Gift Aid allows charities to claim an extra 25 per cent from the government on top of the donations taxpayers give them by submitting the relevant form.
The court heard that the sisters – who had signed the official bank accounts of the guides and brownies – used the names of real people to make false Gift Aid claims when no donations had ever been made, and that they grossly exaggerated claims for real donations submitted.
When the money arrived from HMRC, they bypassed a ‘safeguard’ – requiring a third party signature to authorize the transfer of cash to private bank accounts – by forging volunteers’ signatures or getting them to sign unknowingly, the hearing heard court.
Jean Barnbrook (left) and Sara Barnbrook (right) transferred hundreds of thousands of pounds to their personal bank accounts after wrongly claiming money from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC). Here they are pictured arriving at Leeds Crown Court this morning
Pictured: Jean Barnbrook. Jean was jailed for two and a half years after pleading guilty to money laundering
Between 2013 and 2019, around £235,000 went to Jean’s account, £86,000 to Sara’s and around £125,000 in cashed cheques.
Mr Macdonald said the total value of the crime, in terms of amounts claimed, was £482,294, but only £446,852 was actually paid out by HMRC.
The money was spent by the sisters, who lived together in Leeds, on loan repayments, home improvements, luxuries, hotels, clothing and travel, the court heard.
An investigation by HMRC was triggered when Jean called her bank to track down a Gift Aid payment relating to a girl guide group that had closed 18 months earlier. The sisters had been suspended by the guides at this stage.
Even after they were investigated, the judge said they tried to “scapegoat” the crime by making up a “fictitious person” named Louise.
A letter from ‘Louise’ claimed responsibility for the fraud, but investigators discovered it was written on Jean’s computer and then sent to Sara’s computer.
Judge Mushtaq Khokhar said both sisters “played a role” in the fraud.
He told the pair that it was a “sustained and sophisticated” fraud “against the public purse” committed “out of greed.”
Pictured: Sarah Barnbrook. Sara pleaded guilty to a charge of public revenue fraud and was sentenced to three years in prison
The judge said despite common perception that “this was not a victimless crime” as the victim is “the taxpayer.”
Anastasis Tasou, for Sara, said she had dedicated 30 years of her life to mentoring girls. He said the fraud stemmed from a “desire to raise her standard of living to a level that most people take for granted.”
He said she spent her teenage years on the couch in a partially uninhabitable property with no roof on half of the house.
Mr. Tasou said after repaying the loans “she cannot adequately explain why things got out of hand.”
“Then she immersed herself in the luxuries of life,” he said.
Glenn Parsons, for Jean, told the judge the fraud was ‘mainly caused by her sister’ and claimed she was ‘not the architect’ behind it.
A summary of expenses read out to the court by the couple showed how they indulged in their ill-gotten gains.
Sara spent £24,000 on luxury items, £23,000 on clothes, £20,000 on leisure and £7,600 on travel.
While Jean, who owned their home, spent £68,000 on luxuries, £40,000 on home improvements, £30,000 on hotels, £26,000 on clothes, £23,000 on leisure and £14,500 on travel.
Speaking after the case, Tim Atkins, Operational Lead, Fraud Investigation Service, HMRC, said: ‘These sisters stole money intended to support genuine charities and used it to fund a lifestyle they legitimately could not afford.
“They have used their position of trust to falsify claims, and I hope these sentences serve as a warning to others that we can and will investigate abuse of the Gift Aid system. We will now work to recover the stolen proceeds of crime.”