UK: Nigerian lawyer jailed for fraud


A Nigerian barrister, John Wilmot, has been jailed for five years for attempting to cheat Britain £17.5 million through a fraudulent VAT claim and a bogus £100 million aircraft engine deal.



Wilmot who worked in Temple Chambers, said he paid more than £100 million for the sale of four Boeing 747 engines in south London before selling them to an Iraqi businessman.

Southwark Crown Court has convicted the 35-year-old of cheating the public revenue.

"This was an audacious attempt to obtain a very large sum of public money," said Judge Deborah Taylor while handing down judgment.

The Nigerian national would be deported upon completing his sentence and disqualified as a company director for eight years.

His claims that he was not knowingly involved in the attempted fraud were rejected by the court.

Britain's assistant director of criminal investigation directorate, Robert Gray, wondered why a barrister who is in a "position of knowledge and trust had chosen to abuse his privileged position to mount an extremely serious attack on the VAT system."

He said the "massive fraud" would have succeeded were it not for HM Revenue & customs's (HMRC) "rigorous checking of VAT repayment claims."

The man who claimed to be a barrister specialising in shipping, aviation insurance and international law, was arrested following an investigation triggered by his first VAT Return as a repayment claim for over £17.5 million.

Customs staff, who raised concerns about discrepancies on Wilmot's VAT returns, asked him to explain. He said the massive repayment claim was necessitated by the purchase of jet engines from a UK company, Aircraft Unit Engineering Ltd, which were later sold to an Iraqi businessman. Wilmot also claimed the engines were shipped on the Heroi Strakhorskyi, from Southampton on December 12 , 2006 for the port of Umm Quasr, Iraq.

He had provided paperwork for sales and shipping,


http://odili.net/news/source/2008/jul/2/200.html

Why is this news? british, chines,japanese and american professionals are also cheating and defrauding banks and organisations the world over and nothing much has been made of their crimes so why is this any different?. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Some Nigerians will never learn.

It goes like this,

Get a Fucking Job and maybe You wont have to steal money from people.

Why is this news? british, chines,japanese and american professionals are also cheating and defrauding banks and organisations the world over and nothing much has been made of their crimes so why is this any different

?. . . .
it's news because this is not a liberian, japanese, Chinese or American site. true, Americans have more fraudsters but this is not an American site, .

WOW, this dude must have planned to retire or something to go for such a scam. That is a whole lot of money.

Stupid Stupid Stupid. . . . .

The taxman wants your money. It sure as hell ain't gonna
give you 17.5 million instead.

Audacious though

work of greediness!! £17.5 million

What an idiot! He should have known that he was under scrutiny the minute he became affiliated. Come on hun, didn't you know the whiteman's eyeballs were all over you from day one? You're black and that spells out [size=14pt]SUSPECT[/size] to them. Personally I don't give a damn about nigerians looting from the uk. They're the blame for what we're going through today.

a Nigerian called John Wilmont! r we sure he his who he proclaims to be?
before it was the English criminals using the VAT loophole to make millions on importation of mobile phones. Not news but anything Nigerian will surely make headlines in the western world cos of its rotten image.
still pretty much happy to fly/flaunt the flag though

This boy must be very stupid. More than audacious. Is it not the same British people that are known to put innocent Nigerians through hell at the airport for daring to hold 5k pounds. I hope he will be wiser when he leaves jail.Idiot. He is an embarrassment even to Nigerian scammers.

[size=14pt]NDLEA arrests man with forged European cheques[/size]
By Wole Shadare

THE National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has concluded plans to transfer a 29-year-old man from Benin Republic to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for being in possession of a bag containing forged European cheques valued at €207,000.


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The suspect, Ziko Hilary, was arrested at the Baggage Hall, Idiroko border on June 25, 2008 at about 1.00 p.m. on his way to Cotonu after a business trip to Nigeria.

Ziko, who speaks Yoruba and English, fluently told NDLEA officials that it was one of his customers named Kole, who gave him the parcel containing the cheques for postage in Benin Republic.

Briefing journalists yesterday, Spokesman for the anti-narcotic agency, Ofoyeju Mitchell, said the suspect, who works with an automobile sales company in Benin Republic, claimed that Kole "told me that I should assist him post the parcel in Benin Republic so that it will get to Europe in time. I do not even know the content of the parcel. I was only trying to help him as a customer".

However, the NDLEA Commander at Idiroko Border, Mr. Davis Olatekunbi, has described such help as criminal.

He said that as an adult, the suspect ought to know what could implicate him.

The NDLEA commander promised that besides seizures of illicit drugs, his officers would work hard in intercepting "fraudulent" parcels, thereby preventing them from getting to unsuspecting victims of fraud outside the country.

His words: "We have arrested several suspects at Idiroko here with fraudulent documents in the course of searching for illicit drugs. The command will continue to arrest drug traffickers and fraudsters that make use of the border and bring them to book", Olatekunbi declared.

http://odili.net/news/source/2008/jul/3/27.html