Charity fraudsters jailed for 19 years

Fundraising | 1 Jul 2007

A £1m charity tax fraud involving a disabled children's charity has resulted in four people being jailed for a total of 19 years.

The contractors from fundraising company Drawtreat Ltd in Manchester, who were working for the charity, Care and Action Trust for Children with Handicaps (CATCH) plus CATCH's founder, Trevor England, were charged with theft, failure to operate PAYE taxes and the abuse of gift aid schemes offences.

The Charity Commission became suspicious when less than 20 per cent of the charity's income was being spent directly on children. Further investigations by HMRC revealed that some of the charity's donors on the database were falsely listed as famous cartoon characters while some donations from limited companies were disguised as being made from individuals to illegally claim gift aid repayments. The false tax repayments totalled £680,000 and around £177,000 was directly stolen.

Judge Hammond said at the sentencing: "People are more than willing to give to charities and even more so to charities that look after sick children. I regard people who collected for these charities to hold a position of trust and anyone stealing that money was in breach of that trust and will be sentenced accordingly."

A spokesman for the Charity Commission said: "Of the 190,000 charities, just a handful perpetrate crimes of this severity and furthermore, what this case has shown is the system has worked and the right result has come out."

Directory: Charity Commission

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