-
Shohid Ahmed applied for three Bounce Back Loans using his wife’s name, receiving £100,000 his Indian restaurant was not entitled to
-
An invoice claiming to show £15,000 of the loan was spent on refurbishing the restaurant was revealed to be false during Insolvency Service investigations
-
Ahmed also filed false documents with Companies House to suggest an innocent member of the public had taken over his business
A Bradford fraudster who secured £100,000 in Covid loan funds he was not entitled to and claimed an innocent member of the public was the director of his company has been jailed.
Shohid Ahmed used his wife’s name to apply for three maximum-value Bounce Back Loans on behalf of Red Square Restaurants Limited, an Indian restaurant on Huddersfield Road in Mirfield.
The 40-year-old received £100,000 of the £150,000 he fraudulently applied for in May and June 2020, with one of the applications refused.
Ahmed then used the personal details of a woman who rented a house from his father without her knowledge to create the illusion that she was the director of the company and had taken over the business.
He also produced invoices claiming to show the legitimate use of the Bounce Back Loans, one of which Insolvency Service investigators found to be fabricated.
Ahmed, of Bardsey Crescent, Bradford, pleaded guilty to offences under the Fraud Act 2006, Companies Act 2006 and Insolvency Act 1986 earlier this year.
He was sentenced to two years in prison at Bradford Crown Court on Tuesday 27 May.
Ahmed has repaid £5,000 of the Bounce Back Loans he illegally secured. The Insolvency Service is seeking to recover the remaining fraudulently obtained funds under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.
David Snasdell, Chief Investigator at the Insolvency Service, said:
Shohid Ahmed’s actions were highly deceptive and involved a range of serious offending.
He not only obtained two Bounce Back Loans for the restaurant he earlier had said was no longer trading, but implicated a totally innocent member of the public by creating the false impression that she was now the director of the company.
The Insolvency Service will not hesitate to prosecute Covid fraudsters such as Ahmed who have stolen from the public purse and caused harm to others.
Red Square Restaurants, which traded as Ruby’s Lounge, was incorporated in May 2018, with Ahmed’s wife as the sole director.
Ahmed himself was only officially director of the company for one day, being appointed and then resigning on 10 February 2020.
Despite not being the named director of the company, Ahmed made three Bounce Back Loan applications for Red Square Restaurants in the name of his wife as she had a better credit history than him.
Ahmed also claimed that the company was trading at the beginning of March 2020, to meet the requirements of the scheme.
That claim was contradicted by an application signed by Ahmed to strike the company off the Companies House register in early April 2020.
In the strike-off application, Ahmed said that the company had not traded in the previous three months.
Money from the Bounce Back Loans was also not used for the economic benefit of the business, as it should have been under the scheme.
Ahmed claimed that an invoice of £15,000 showed that money was spent on an interior redesign of his restaurant using a firm based in Stockton-on-Tees.
However, investigators found that the address for the design company Ahmed claimed to have used was actually a cafe which had been trading for 37 years.
Neither the cafe which occupied the unit or the landlord who manages the building had ever heard of the firm of interior designers.
A liquidator was appointed to wind-up Red Square Restaurants in July 2020.
Shortly before this, Ahmed filed false documents with Companies House claiming that a new director had been appointed on New Year’s Day in 2020.
Insolvency Service investigators spoke to the listed director who confirmed that she had no association whatsoever with Red Square Restaurants and had simply rented a house from Ahmed’s father.
However, Ahmed falsely claimed that she was the manager of the business who ran it day-to-day and had the power to recruit and dismiss members of staff.
Ahmed also falsely claimed that she had taken out both Bounce Back Loans and had access to the bank accounts where the money was deposited.
He added that he was a waiter and drew a salary of only £12,000.
Ahmed was disqualified as a company director for 11 years in December 2021 for his misconduct at Red Square Restaurants.
A restaurant under a different name now operates from the same address that Red Square Restaurants traded from. Shohid Ahmed is not a director of this company.
