A UK man has been jailed for four years and eight months after inventing hundreds of charitable donations to fraudulently claim 708,750 from the government through the Gift Aid scheme. Abdul Muttakin Robbani, 54, from Chelmsford, submitted 60 false claims through his organisation, RMI Club, naming 716 people as donors despite them never having made the contributions. According to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), many of those named had only completed online surveys for small payments and did not know the organisation. Robbani used the proceeds to pay off mortgages and personal and family debts.
According to the CPS, Robbani's false claims identified 716 individuals as donors who had supposedly contributed between 5,000 and 10,000 each to RMI Club. However, the people whose names appeared on the claims had not made any such donations. Many of them had simply completed an online survey in return for a small payment and did not know RMI Club.Robbani told HMRC that the individuals had been recruited through a marketing survey called the 'Sigma Social Impact Programme'. The programme was linked to a cryptocurrency mining scheme called 'XO', which he had created. The claims presented the survey participants as people who had made substantial charitable contributions, although they had not donated the amounts recorded in the submissions.
To make...
A UK man has been jailed for four years and eight months after inventing hundreds of charitable donations to fraudulently claim 708,750 from the government through the Gift Aid scheme. Abdul Mutta...