Shared anti-fraud service and county legal team secure resentencing of defendant who provided forged documents to court
A Shared Anti Fraud Service team and Hertfordshire County Council's Legal Service have secured the resentencing of a former town centre bid manager after it was shown that he provided forged documents to the Crown Court as part of his mitigation at sentence.
Describing it as “an extremely rare case”, Herts Legal Service said the defendant, Mr Andoh-Wilson had been employed by Luton Crown Court as a Cells Manager and pleaded guilty to smuggling drugs into the cells and Luton Crown Court and supplying them to those in custody.
While on bail for this offence, the defendant obtained a position as the bid manager in Letchworth and proceeded to commit numerous frauds on the council and individuals including £61,000 Covid grant fraud.
Andoh-Wilson pleaded guilty to five offences under The Fraud Act 2006 and one offence under The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. He was sentenced to 2 years imprisonment suspended for 2 years.
Herts Legal Services said: “Following the original sentencing it came to light that a certificate signed by the Mayor of Luton turned out to be false and signed by his mother, who was a former mayor. The second was an employer’s reference which had been forged by Mr Andoh-Wilson without the knowledge of his employers.”
Prosecutors applied to the Court to consider whether it should exercise its powers under section 385(2) of the Sentencing Act 2020 – the so-called ‘slip rule’ – which provides, subject to certain conditions, that ‘the Crown Court may vary or rescind the sentence at any time within the period of 56 days beginning with the day on which the sentence was imposed’.
On 22 January the Court rescinded the previous Sentence as, halfway through the hearing, the prosecution received numerous documents from the prosecutor who dealt with the sentence for the drugs offences.
Contained within them was the identical references with different dates, which the defendant had altered, Herts Legal Services said.
On 8 February, the defendant admitted to forging the documents and deceiving the court.
HHJ Siddique sentenced him to immediate custody for a period of 20 months.
