Benefits fraud investigator faces jail for claiming £31,000 by pretending his wife was a hard-up single parent

Mohammed Aslam, 37, helped Afshan Ishaq make a string of benefit claims as she pretended to be a hard-up single parent with as little as £20 in the bank.

But London's Harrow Crown Court heard that in reality they were living together, and apart from working as a teacher she was enjoying the rent from one of their properties.

Andrew Evans, prosecuting, said Ishaq, also 37, eventually fell under suspicion.

Despite the pair having wed the previous year under Islamic tradition, her trusted Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) partner pretended he and the mother-of-two were strangers.
That allowed him to formally interview her and halt the inquiry.

Aslam, of Baffingham Way, Wembley, north-west London, and Ishaq, who according to court records now lives separately in nearby Barn Way, originally denied any wrongdoing.
But a month into their trial, and while one of them was still in the witness box, further developments resulted in the pair changing some of their pleas.

Ishaq admitted three accounts of deception involving housing and council tax benefits as well as income support.

Aslam pleaded guilty to wilful misconduct in public office, money laundering and three counts of perverting the course of justice.

All the offences were committed between April 18, 2004 and July 2, 2008.
Judge Graham Arran told the couple they could remain on bail until November 2 while pre-sentence reports were prepared.

Mr Evans told the court that Aslam joined the DWP in February 2000 as an administrative assistant.

The following year he met Ishaq - then a colleague - and a relationship developed.
In 2003, and still at the DWP, she allegedly began a life of crime with a £157,000 mortgage obtained by posing as a £49,000-a-year self-employed IT consultant.

Twelve months later, by which time she was a primary school teacher, Aslam helped her submit a dishonest £9,000 income support application.

The barrister said that according to the paperwork she did not have a partner, lived at an address she was really renting out, covering up thousands in the bank, and had no income apart from state handouts.

Mr Evans told jurors the pair then conned Harrow Council out of a fortune by claiming housing and council tax benefit.

This time they pretended to be landlord and tenant and concocted a rent agreement showing Ishaq was supposedly paying Aslam £1,050 a month.

The £22,546 they are said to have dishonestly pocketed as a result boosted their alleged criminal windfall to a total of £31,447.

'In July 2005, Ishaq's income support claim was investigated by Harrow's Fraud Investigation Service, which had received information that she had been working whilst claiming benefits.
'She was therefore requested to attend an interview under caution, which she did on July 28 that year.

'But the benefit fraud investigator who interviewed her on that occasion was Mohammed Aslam.'
By doing so, he committed 'a clear and serious breach' of the investigators' code of conduct and good practice.

Counsel explained he then effectively buried the matter by pretending to issue her with a formal caution, but then failed to log it on the DWP's database.
The barrister added the investigator also tried to reduce his workload by forging signatures on three special forms that halted inquiries by making it appear those under investigation had agreed to pay penalties.