A fraudster who scammed companies out of millions of pounds through bogus personal protective equipment (PPE) deals during the Covid-19 pandemic has been jailed.
Jogesh Bhandari, 60, spent £126,000 on a Porsche and bought an Audi A5, a Land Rover Discovery, Rolex watches, and holiday packages after pretending he could supply millions of boxes of nitrile gloves in the US and Germany between late 2020 and early 2022.
Fraud conspiracy and sentencing
Bhandari and 43-year-old Craig Morris, who helped him carry out the sham deals, were found guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation and money laundering following a five-week trial at Leicester Crown Court. Sentencing Bhandari to eight years in prison at Northampton Crown Court on Friday, Judge William Harbage KC said the defendant was the "driving force" of the offending as the "directing mind" of Banton, the company he and Morris used to carry out the fraud.
The judge said remorse expressed by Bhandari, of Mitchell Drive in Loughborough, Leicestershire, in a letter to the court is "difficult to accept given how vigorously you contested these charges".
Details of the fraud
Bhandari defrauded US company Med18 and German firm MedTech by sending contracts for equipment he did not have, the court heard. Bhandari retained £1.75 million during the course of the fraud, the court was told.
Morris, of All Saints Road in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, bought a house with money given to him by Bhandari and received regular payments of £5,000, the court previously heard. Bhandari attempted to take his own life after being convicted and has impending divorce proceedings, defence barrister Dominic Bardill said.
Wife's involvement and aftermath
Meenakshi Bhandari, 58, his wife and a former pharmacist, was found guilty of money laundering after the couple made luxury purchases and paid off family debt. In his letter, which was partly read aloud, Jogesh Bhandari wrote that he has "destroyed the life of the woman I truly love with all my heart", adding that "now she despises me".
The court heard Bhandari also pretended to have cancer, which Mr Bardill said was a "spur of the moment lie" because the defendant was "completely out of his depth". Mr Bardill told the court: "There is an element of using the dishonesty to run away from the stress, pressure and consequences of those actions."
He added: "This man standing before you, up until this point, has been a man of good character, a family man, a man who brought up two children. It was a mixture of greed, a mixture of, as I say, terrible decision-making. When I say he's lost everything, I'm deadly serious. He really has lost everything because of that offence."
Last week, Morris was sentenced to three years and nine months in prison. Meenakshi Bhandari was handed a two-year prison sentence, suspended for two years, 250 hours of unpaid work and 15 days of rehabilitation activity.
