Fraudster's friend helped in £722k Covid loan scam

A man who played a "vital role" in his fraudster friend's £722,000 coronavirus loan scam has been given a suspended sentence.

Neil Moore made more than £37,000 by allowing his name to be used for fictitious companies, set up by serial conman Timothy Paul Nellis, to claim government loans intended to help businesses survive the pandemic, Newcastle Crown Court heard.

Moore, 58, from Newcastle, was jailed for a year suspended for 18 months after admitting transferring criminal property.

A judge said Nellis was the "most dishonest man" he had come across in his legal career when he jailed him for almost 18 years in December, while his accomplice Sundeep Chahal remains on the run.

Nellis set up 15 fake companies between April and November 2020 to make bounce back loan claims, with the firms quickly wound up after payment had been made from the taxpayer-funded scheme, prosecutor Stephen Grattage said.

Moore was named as the director on two of them and also allowed loan money to be paid from the fraudulent firms to his own legitimate blind company, the court heard.

Each of the two fake companies Moore was director of received £50,000 from the scheme and Moore made a total of £37,364.01, the court heard.

Nellis plundered £722,000 from his scheme, none of which has been recovered, the court heard.

At the time of the Covid-19 scam, Nellis, from Morpeth, Northumberland, and Chahal, from Durham, were already being investigated for a £825,000 bank fraud which involved the creation of dozens of fabricated companies, the court heard.

The pair used the money to set up two industrial-scale cannabis farms, the court heard.

The bank scam was "fortuitously" discovered in April 2019 after Nellis failed to pay his bill at the Grand Hotel Gosforth Park, from where he was operating, Grattage said.

Staff went into his room and discovered piles of paperwork and mobile phones linked to the fraud, the court heard.

Later that day, a police officer encountered Moore in the corridor outside Nellis' room, with the defendant appearing to take "evasive action" when he saw police, the court heard.

When questioned, Moore claimed he was staying on the floor below and had come up as he was "intrigued" by the police activity, Grattage said, adding he "categorically denied" knowing Nellis.

A year later police carried out a search warrant of two flats on Newcastle quayside linked to Nellis, where they discovered his Covid-19 loan scam in operation.

Messages on Nellis' wife's mobile phone revealed her fraudster husband had a "close relationship" to Moore, the court heard.

Grattage said Nellis was in control of the scam but Moore "passed over his details knowing they would be involved in some sort of crime".

In mitigation, Moore claimed he had been "duped" by Nellis but accepted that was "hard to argue" as "you don't receive money for nothing", his barrister said.

Judge Tim Gittins, who had previously jailed Nellis and sentenced Chahal to 20 years in his absence, said Moore played a "vital role" in the "major" and "sophisticated" Covid-19 fraud.

"The money that was being defrauded was not just public money but money that was being provided when the country could least afford it," the judge said.

He said fraudsters like Nellis, with the help of people like Moore, were "prepared to abuse a system set up in haste to try and keep legitimate businesses going through the difficulties of the pandemic" and which "relied on people's honesty".

Gittins said Moore would have been "well aware" it was illegal and got "substantial sums of money" from it.

He disqualified Moore from being a company director for six years.

The judge also praised police and prosecutors for their "tour de force" work on the "clearly complex and voluminous investigation", which helped the jurors who convicted Nellis and Chahal of seeing through the defendants' "manipulative false defences".

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