Woman stole £1,000,000 from work and gave it to lover who didn’t even exist
A woman who stole nearly £1,000,000 from her employers to give to a man who didn’t even exist after being duped by a romance fraudster has now been jailed.
Manjit Singh, 60, transferred £958,180 from the accounts of her bosses at Lei Dat & Baig solicitors in Liverpool to another she believed belonged to Ravi Jani after meeting on a dating site.
The city’s crown court heard Singh’s personal circumstances made her ‘ripe for exploitation’ and she fell ‘under his spell’ after he promised to come to the UK to marry her.
But before he could travel, he told her he needed money to ship equipment over from Dubai, where he claimed to have been working.
Jailing Singh, of Toxteth, for two years after she admitted eight counts of fraud, Judge David Aubrey KC said: ‘Not only were you a fraudster, you were also a victim of a fraud and what has rightly been called a romance fraud.
‘You were duped and were yourself subject of a classic online con. You did not receive one penny for that which you did dishonestly and at the time is quite apparent you had been exploited.’
The judge went on: ‘You had gone on a site for those who wish to get married and there you “met” the devious and so-called Ravi Jani.
‘He inveigled his way into your life, you were accommodating, indeed, in my judgement you were in awe.
‘You were under his spell while he spun a yarn to you because you were seeking marriage. There was never going to be any sailing into the sunset with him.’
Peter Killen, prosecuting, told the court Singh joined the legal firm back in 2014 as a volunteer on IT systems.
By 2017, she had become a full-time employee and by 2019 was working on cases and had been trained to transfer money between client and office amounts and make payments under the supervision of owner Naeem Baig.
When Mr Baig checked his business account late on October 6, 2021, he was shocked to find the expected balance of £800,000 was just £40,000.
Further inspection revealed eight transactions of between £1,000 and £260,000 made in the past two weeks all to the same account.
Singh told him she had mistakenly made them from the company account instead of her own and showed him a photo of a cheque from Ravi reimbursing the money.
She also showed screenshots of a bank account purportedly belonging to him containing more than $2,000,000.
But Mr Baig’s suspicions only grew after speaking to the fraudster over the phone and fearing the firm was in jeopardy, he called the police.
When interviewed, Singh admitted making the transfers and said: ‘It’s just a stupid thing that I have done thinking that I was helping someone and then I end up getting myself caught, thinking the money would come back to the account, you know, and all would be OK.’
Mr Killen told the court: ‘She explained the transfers were for a man called Ravi she had met online. She believed that Ravi wanted to marry her, she believed he was currently in Dubai working.
‘She met him on a site for people interested in getting married.’
Singh explained how she initially said no to his request for few thousand pounds but once she relented, he kept asking for larger and larger payments saying he would be able to travel once his equipment was shipped.
When her bank accounts were examined, there was no evidence she benefited financially in any way from the fraud.
Ravi kept assuring her the money would be repaid but eventually on the evening of October 7 he stopped answering messages, the court heard.
Judge Aubrey said the solicitor’s firm has been reimbursed by its insurers but faces higher charges and Mr Baig is now on anti-depressants and had had to put forward his personal assets to guarantee payments.
He said Singh, who separated from her husband in 2019, was at the time of the offices ‘vulnerable and susceptible to exploitation’.
Gwen Renshaw, defending, said Singh, who has long-standing mental health problems, was going through a difficult time and was ‘ripe for exploitation’.
The court heard she and her siblings all worked in the police back in her native Malaysia, but she left after her father, also an officer, was shot.
She defied her family’s disapproval to marry someone from a different faith only for her husband to leave her for another woman while she battled cancer.
He then had a child in his new relationship while her illness left her unable to conceive, the court heard.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.