Civil Servant Kashim Chowdhury Convicted in £284,000 Fraud Case

A Southwark Crown Court jury convicted Kashim Chowdhury, 56, on Monday of nine counts of fraud tied to £284,000 in payments he collected while holding multiple overlapping government jobs between 2020 and 2023, according to BBC News.

How much money was involved and over what period?

Prosecutors said Chowdhury fraudulently earned more than £284,000 of taxpayers' money, BBC News reported. Across the full run of his overlapping employment, from 2020 to 2023, he was paid £350,000 in total, the outlet said. The gap between the two figures reflects pay he drew from roles investigators determined were legitimately worked versus hours billed on top of jobs he could not have performed simultaneously.

How many jobs did he hold at once, and how many hours did that require?

At one point Chowdhury held eight overlapping full-time public-sector jobs, according to BBC News. In May 2023 alone, he was drawing pay from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Department for Business and Trade, the Food Standards Agency and the Home Office at the same time, the outlet reported. Those positions combined to a contracted 183 hours a week — more hours than exist in seven days, BBC News noted.

The arithmetic

• £284,000 — fraudulently earned, per prosecutors, cited by BBC News
• £350,000 — total pay across all roles, 2020 to 2023, per BBC News
• 8 — overlapping full-time public-sector jobs held during that period
• 183 — contracted hours per week across simultaneous roles in May 2023
• 9 — counts of fraud on which he was convicted

Why did it take so long for his employers to catch on?

Chowdhury's line manager at UKHSA, Aleesha Adams, told the trial she grew suspicious during a video call in May 2023, when he appeared to be using white make-up to simulate illness while on sick leave. "He was sweating, it was like rubbing off, so it was darker underneath and darker on the neck," she told the court, according to BBC News. Chowdhury denied wearing make-up.

Adams also discovered he had logged into that call using a Defra email address — a department where, unknown to UKHSA, he was separately employed full-time. When she pressed him on it, "he blamed it on a technical error," BBC News reported. Adams testified: "I believed he was lying." She escalated the matter, but, per BBC News, "his fraudulent behaviour remained undetected," and he kept working multiple government jobs until he left the Civil Service in September 2023.

What finally exposed the scheme?

Chowdhury was caught in 2024 by the government's National Fraud Initiative, a program that cross-checks Civil Service databases, including payroll, every two years to flag anomalies, according to BBC News. That biennial sweep — not his line manager's escalation the year before — is what surfaced the overlapping payroll records across five departments and agencies.

Timeline

• 2013 — Chowdhury says he was forced out of a job at the Department for Education
• 2015 — diagnosed with PTSD, according to his trial testimony
• 2020–2023 — holds up to eight overlapping full-time public-sector roles, paid £350,000 total
• May 2023 — line manager Aleesha Adams grows suspicious during a video call; Chowdhury on sick leave from UKHSA while logging in via a Defra email address
• September 2023 — Chowdhury leaves the Civil Service
• 2024 — National Fraud Initiative payroll cross-check flags the anomalies
• November 9, 2026 — convicted on nine counts of fraud at Southwark Crown Court

What did he say in his defense, and what did prosecutors argue?

Chowdhury told the court he had taken on multiple roles out of fear of losing his livelihood after experiencing insecure employment, referencing his exit from the Department for Education in 2013. He said he "hadn't been thinking clearly when applying for jobs because of my stress, distress and trauma and due to my panic at the time," according to BBC News.

Prosecutors countered that his conduct was "deliberate" and amounted to "intentional dishonesty," arguing he had exploited the system, BBC News reported. The judge told Chowdhury he would be facing "a very substantial custodial sentence." BBC News described him arriving at court alone each day, sometimes carrying two plastic bags, with no family or friends present, and appearing "bewildered in the witness box."

What happens next?

Sentencing has not yet occurred, based on available reporting; the judge's remark about a "very substantial custodial sentence" signals the range under consideration, but BBC News did not report a sentencing date. The case leaves open how the Civil Service's payroll systems — checked only once every two years by the National Fraud Initiative — might close the gap that let one employee draw pay from five separate departments for months before detection.