Amirum Begum, a 49-year-old accountant from Fratton, Portsmouth, has avoided prison after admitting to stealing £72,582.17 of taxpayers' money to pay off scammers in Kenya. The theft occurred between April 2022 and January 2023 while she worked in the housing office accountancy department of Portsmouth City Council.
Begum, who had been employed by the council for 27 years, manipulated cash records by recording lower amounts than what residents had paid and keeping the difference. She converted the stolen funds into Amazon gift cards, which were then used to pay the scammers.
Investigation and Court Proceedings
The fraud was discovered when the council noticed discrepancies in cash reports. An internal investigation was launched, and the police were contacted, leading to Begum's dismissal from her position. Portsmouth Crown Court heard that Begum was herself a victim of fraud in 2021, having applied for a loan from a company in Kenya that turned out to be a scam. She was subsequently coerced and intimidated into making payments to the scammers, who bombarded her with threatening messages.
Begum pleaded guilty at the first opportunity to one count of theft by an employee. She was also charged with acquiring criminal property and false accounting, but these charges were kept on file and no sentence was given for them.
Sentence and Judge's Remarks
On August 10, 2026, Judge Michael Bowes KC sentenced Begum to eight months in custody, suspended for two years, and ordered her to complete 200 hours of unpaid work. No compensation order was made. In his sentencing remarks, Judge Bowes stated: “This is a serious offence. The city council serves the community, and is funded by public money, which you stole. You frequently cashed up monies received and would print the daily cash total reports. You changed the amounts, and kept the difference. The police were involved, and you subsequently lost your job. You became involved through coercion, intimidation or exploitation – the court has been provided with the substantial string of messages between you and those purporting to offer you a loan. That does not excuse your theft of public money, but goes quite a long way to explaining what happened.”
Council Response and Preventative Measures
A Portsmouth City Council spokesperson said: “Acts like this are rare and we take all incidents of this kind very seriously. Once we were made aware of the situation, we investigated the matter and referred it to the police. Appropriate management action was taken and the individual no longer works for the council. We want to reassure tenants that their services were not affected by this incident, which took place three years ago. We manage around 17,000 homes, so the amount of money involved, while significant, makes up a very small part of our total annual rent income. At the time of the incident, we reviewed our processes around cash handling to mitigate against this highly unusual incident happening again.”
The case highlights the vulnerability of individuals to online scams and the potential consequences for public sector employees who succumb to such pressures. The council has since implemented stricter cash-handling procedures to prevent similar incidents in the future.
