FIVE fraudsters who scammed companies, organisations and people out of almost a million pounds have been sentenced at Reading Crown Court in recent months.
They won’t all serve prison time, but those that will are set to be behind bars for years to come.
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Here are some of the scammers who have appeared in the dock since April.
The car dealer
Richard Zarifeh defrauded Bracknell’s Jemca Toyota car dealership of more than £750,000 in a bid to fuel his gambling addiction between 2017 and 2019.
The 32-year-old, an employee at the dealership, started funnelling money from the sale of the cars into his own bank account in January 2017 and continued this abuse of power for more than two years.
His actions came to light when he confessed his stealing -- which cost the car dealership a total of £777,620 -- to a colleague at a meeting he had arranged.
Lily Roberts-Phelps, prosecuting, said: “This was a sophisticated fraud.”
Zarifeh, of Church Lane, Arborfield, was handed a 3-year-and-ten month prison sentence at Reading Crown Court in April.
The Church treasurer
Sindlesham man Nicolas Bornman-Hill was told he will have to pay pack the £22,000 he stole from Wokingham Methodist Church over the course of four years at Reading Crown Court last week.
The 50-year-old avoided jail because he proved to a Judge that he could pay back the cash.
Bornman-Hill, of Harrow Way, defrauded Wokingham Methodist Church of £22,153.61 between August 2013 and December 2017.
The Sindlesham man was able to access this cash because he worked as the church’s treasurer during this time.
The customer services rep
More than £55,000 was stolen from Bracknell’s Panasonic by their customer services supervisor Lisa Garland between 2017 and 2019.
The fraudster embezzled the money by offering ‘refunds’ to family and friends who complained about Panasonic items.
The 42-year-old’s actions came to light when Garland, who was in charge of a Panasonic voucher scheme, reported some vouchers had gone missing.
This caused investigations to start and eventually resulted in police trawling through her bank account matching payments to the electrical goods which were sent out.
Speaking in April, prosecutor Robin Sellers said: “It was a rather sophisticated manipulation of the customer services system.”
Garland, of Lochinver, Bracknell, was sentenced to two years and four years in prison suspended for 18 months for the counts of fraud and theft.
The ‘predator’
Michael Walker, of Uxbridge Road, Slough, ‘appallingly’ defrauded a couple out of £26,000 between 2014 and 2016 after falsely promising to secure a holiday and a home for them.
The 59-year-old, described as a “predator” by a judge, came up with a “series of excuses” for not delivering on his promises, including a lie about a fake cancer diagnosis.
Reading Crown Court heard how the couple was defrauded of around £26,000 in total, but the figure could be as high as £33,000 through other scams and blackmail carried out by Walker.
When questioned about the money by the couple, Walker made threats to them over the phone, told the man he would break his legs and promised to send bailiffs round to their property if they did not stop quizzing him.
Walker, 59, was handed a prison sentence of four years and nine months in May after he was convicted of three counts of fraud and two counts of blackmail.
The eBay fraudster
Mohammed Asghar, of Linden Road, Reading, sold counterfeit vehicle certificates from four separate eBay accounts over the course of 18 months in what was a “sophisticated” fraud that earned him more than £70,000.
The 30-year-old used his friend’s name on some of the accounts to sell service histories for brands including Land Rover and BMW as he “worked in the shadows.”
His actions will have had a “significant” impact on the public, a court heard, as car sellers can use the service histories to suggest their vehicles are well-maintained, hiking the price of the motor at the point of sale.
Asghar was sentenced to three years in prison in May 2021.
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