Charity boss jailed for £5million Gift Aid scam after using dead people’s names to claim cash for fake donation

A CHARITY boss is behind bars for 12 years after he used dead people's names to rake in more than £5m in a tax scam.
Heartless conman, John Davies, used two charities for his own money making scheme for five years by using names of the dead to create fictional donations and claiming Gift Aid.
The 58-year-old fraudster, from Esher in Surrey, submitted tens of thousands of fake charity Gift Aid donation forms to HMRC and pocketed the cash.
Davies, alongside accomplice Olsi Vullnetari, 37, who was sentenced to seven years behind bars, claimed they were trustees and associates of two charities, the Sompan Foundation and the Kurbet Foundation.
The charities had been legitimately set up to support women and children in crisis and poverty and to help migrants access social networks, but crooked Davies took over when the founder died, and turned the charity into a money-making goldmine.
From 2007 to 2012, Davies, and Vullnetari, of Oxford, carried out the scheme. Both charities are registered to addresses in Kingston.
David Margree, assistant director, Fraud Investigation Service, HMRC, said: "These fraudsters despicably extorted £5 million from honest British taxpayers.
"Gift Aid is in place to support legitimate charities and offer extra funding, not for the financial benefit of criminals who abuse the system.
"HMRC and our partner, the Crown Prosecution Service, have brought to justice these fraudsters who, had they not been stopped, would have continued to rob public services and genuine charities of a great deal more.
"HMRC has already seized more than £848,000 from these tax cheats and we will look to recover further criminal profits."

They produced false paperwork to support the Gift Aid claims and the proceeds of the fraud were then laundered through various bank accounts - before being sent back to their home country of Hungary.
The Tosk Foundation, whose headquarters are located near the Davies family home in Balastya, Hungary, received around £1.6 million in payments.
The men were arrested between May 2013 and June 2015, and later charged with cheating the public revenue and money laundering.
An eight-week trial at Southwark Crown Court saw Davies and Vullnetari found guilty of cheating the public revenue and money laundering, and Davies' son, Benjamin, found guilty of money laundering.
Mastermind Davies received 12 years, while Vullnetari was jailed for seven years at Southwark Crown Court on Friday.
Davies' son Ben Davis was jailed for three years.
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