Human resources employee who cooked the books to pay herself more than £100k, through fraudulent invoices, receives a three-year prison sentence

A woman who worked in the HR department of an American consultancy and a property and construction company has been sentenced after it was revealed that she paid herself over £100,000 in fake invoices.

Farah Ahmed, 48, of Barn Close, Slough, pleaded guilty to seven of the 11 offences she was charged with and was sentenced at Kingston Crown Court to three years in prison. The charges included fraud by abuse of position and perverting the course of justice.

During the course of her employment across two different companies, Ahmed falsified invoices and transferred funds from her employers to her own bank account, a debt recovery company and a solicitors’ firm for a total of more than £100,000.

Detective Inspector Nichola Meghji, from the Fraud Operations team, at the City of London Police said:

“In any organisation, employees depend on their human resources department to be upstanding with a strong moral compass, to have great judgement and to be impartial and honest in their decision making. Sadly, in the case of Farah Ahmed, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Ahmed abused the privileges of her managerial position to pay off her personal debts.

“Often, people think that fraud being committed against an organisation is victimless, however the reality is that it can have a direct effect on the employees as businesses rely on profitability to pay their employees’ salaries, health benefits, and health insurance.”

Ahmed was employed by a consultancy service that was primarily used by automotive companies in market research and intelligence as well as a property and construction company where she held different roles in human resources (HR) departments. During her two roles, Ahmed’s responsibility was to manage the hiring of new employees and internships and the career progression of employees where she was their main point of contact for HR related issues.

In November 2019, Ahmed was dismissed from her work after a formal complaint was made by the office manager. This was in addition to other colleagues who, over the course of her employment, had raised issues about Ahmed’s work ethic and approachability as a HR Manager. The complaint was investigated and Ahmed was dismissed after false invoices were found on her computer which were paid to her personal bank account.

After Ahmed was dismissed, four additional invoices were found in her office that had not been processed and were dated after her dismissal. If she had not been dismissed and her fraudulent activity had not been uncovered, this was likely to have resulted in further losses.

It is believed that Ahmed used the stolen money to pay off an outstanding debt she had with a debt recovery company for a vehicle loan that she had failed to make repayments on.

In addition to falsifying invoices, Ahmed also used an email hacking tool to attempt to hack the email of her (then) Managing Director of the company she worked at between 2015 and 2017. However, the MD received emails to say that an email had failed to send. The email read:

“Hello Ahmed.

I have performed the hack and I now have access to the account that is why I am able to message you from here.

Please reply me on my mail and let me know if you see this message.”

On further investigation, it was revealed that the email it was trying to reach belonged to Farah Ahmed.