Photo: Central News
Chowdhury Muyeed (top), 51, and and accomplice Asma Khanam both from Ilford, Essex, set up the bogus companies Families for Survival UK and Age Shelter UK Ltd to pay wages to Italian passport-holders

'convicted, facing jail time'

Chowdhury Muyeed, 51, and Asma Khanam, 47, to be sentenced on April 8
Essex couple set up fake companies to pay wages to Bangladeshi migrants
'Sophisticated' rouse allowed the migrants to claim housing benefit
Accomplice Habibur Rahman, 36, also faces jail for similar con Judge Nigel Peters, QC, said it was 'housing benefit fraud on a huge scale'

A married couple who ran a dole scam which involved flying hundreds of Bangladeshi migrants into Britain for a day to claim $2.3 million (£1.6 million) in handouts are facing jail.

Chowdhury Muyeed, 51, and Asma Khanam, 47, both from Ilford, Essex, set up the companies Families for Survival UK and Age Shelter UK Ltd to pay wages to Italian passport-holders.

Migrants based in Italy were supplied with sham addresses and flown into the UK through Stansted to attend Job Centre interviews, before getting their hands on National Insurance numbers.

One of those addresses, on Mile End Road in east London, was so busy that migrants spilled out onto the street in front of an Italian restaurant below.

Photo: Central News

Asma Khanam (right), 47, and Chowdhury Muyeed set up the bogus scheme

Their jobs allowed them to claim housing benefit - £578,000 from the London Borough of Redbridge and more than £600,000 from Tower Hamlets.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was also stung for over £420,000.

Accomplice Habibur Rahman, 36, from Mile End, was also in court, for using his businesses, including Haiba Laiba Ltd and Crystal Jobs Ltd, to run a similar con.

A jury took nine hours to convict all three defendants. Muyeed, an accountant, was found guilty of conspiring to dishonestly produce false statements of information while Khanam and Rahman were found guilty of furnishing documents of information.

'They have been convicted of serious offenses and, in the male defendants' cases, they both face substantial sentences of imprisonment.'

Photo: Google

Investigation: The probe by police, council and Government investigators prompted a raid on one flat (pictured) above a restaurant in Bow, east London, used as an address by 400 claimants

The applicants also shared the same Bangladeshi ethnicity and Italian nationality allowing them to legitimately work in the UK and claim benefits.

The three crooks operated a system of 'circular payments' where sums would be transferred to the dummy organisations before being paid back as 'wages'.

Khanam has been convicted of being involved with her husband in a housing benefit fraud on a huge scale

Judge Nigel Peters, QC

The sophisticated ruse typically documented 24 hours' work per week at the minimum wage which both entitled the migrants to benefits and ensured the tax office were unaware of the con.

Muyeed told the jury he had created 'dummy pay slips' in the past but insisted this was only done for 'training purposes'.

He also confessed to having advised clients what benefits are available to European Economic Area migrants and was later presented with documents found by DWP investigators during a search of offices at 501 Olympic House, Ilford.

These including registration papers of the bogus organisations which named former colleagues as directors or trustees - while they remained oblivious to their existence.

When confronted with the signatures of Chantell Witten and Lina Gyllensten, Muyeed bizarrely claimed to have been introduced to strangers with the same name years later.