A London man has been found guilty of defrauding the British government after prosecutors showed he had secretly held eight full-time public-sector jobs at once, drawing multiple government salaries for years without any of his employers realizing he was also working elsewhere.
Kashim Chowdhury, from east London, was convicted at Southwark Crown Court of eight counts of fraud by false representation and one count of fraud by failing to disclose information, according to the BBC. Between 2020 and 2023, Chowdhury held overlapping roles at eight separate employers — Tower Hamlets council, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, East London NHS Trust, the Department of Health, the UK Health Security Agency, the Department for Business and Trade, the Food Standards Agency and the Home Office — with annual salaries ranging from £38,158 to £52,606 each. In total, he earned more than £350,000 across the roles, including upwards of £284,000 that prosecutors said he obtained fraudulently.
Witnesses described a pattern of absenteeism that went largely unchallenged. Dan McCartney, who managed Chowdhury during his time at Defra, testified that he "had to effectively tell him what to do the whole time" and said Chowdhury kept his camera switched off during video calls for four to five months, blaming technical problems. Because no formal performance measures were raised against him, Chowdhury was made permanent and stayed in the role for two years.
In his defense, Chowdhury said he had taken on multiple jobs out of fear of losing his livelihood, citing a redundancy from the Department for Education in 2013 and a subsequent diagnosis of PTSD, according to LBC's reporting on the case. The judge was unmoved, remarking that Chowdhury faced "a very significant custodial sentence" and refusing him bail, citing both the seriousness of the offending and concern for his wellbeing pending sentencing.
The case has drawn attention in Westminster as a case study in weak cross-department vetting, with multiple government agencies apparently unaware for years that one of their full-time employees was simultaneously drawing a salary from several others at once.