Recruitment firm boss cheated pension scheme
AN Ashbourne man was among senior staff at a recruitment agency who dodged making pension payments to temporary workers by dishonestly tampering with their records.
Workchain Ltd owners and directors Phil Tong, from Spend Lane, Ashbourne, and Adam Hinkley, of Alvaston, encouraged five senior staff at the company to remove temporary workers from the workplace pension scheme to save the firm thousands of pounds.
Financial controller Hannah Armson, HR and compliance officer Lisa Neal and branch managers Martin West, Robert Tomlinson and Andrew Thorpe, then worked together to opt workers out of the pension scheme, NEST, using its online system.
Workchain, which was then based in Stephensons Way, Derby, and formerly known as Smart Recruitment UK Ltd, would have been able to avoid paying tens of thousands of pounds in pension contributions if the offence had gone undetected.
Derby Crown Court was told that, although the financial loss was just short of £3,000, the projected loss would have been between £35,000 and £50,000 had the offending not been discovered.
Sentencing Tong, 41, and Hinkley, 40, Judge Nirmal Shant QC said: “This was deliberate subversion of a system designed to protect employees, which harmed public confidence.
“You created an environment where pressure was put on employees to unlawfully access computers.”
She fined Workchain £200,000 and ordered it to pay £60,930 costs.
Judge Shant handed the two men four-month jail terms, suspended for two years, and ordered both to carry out 200 hours’ unpaid work and pay £11,250 costs.
Armson, 34, of Heath Lane, Findern, and Neal, 34, of Mackworth, who both cried in the dock, were handed twomonth jail terms, suspended for two years, with £1,500 costs.
Armson was handed a fivemonth overnight curfew. Neal was ordered to carry out 200 hours’ unpaid work.
West, 31, of Hucknall, Nottingham; Tomlinson, 38, of Crosby Close, Mansfield; and Thorpe, 34, of Burntwood, Staffordshire, were each handed two-year community orders, with 150 hours’ unpaid work and £500 costs.
The court heard how a joint investigation into Workchain involving The Pensions Regulator (TPR), the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate, Derbyshire Constabulary, and Nottinghamshire Constabulary, was launched after NEST reported its concerns to TPR in May 2014. The offenders were brought in for questioning and all admitted what they had done.
Ian Whitehurst, for Workchain, said the financial loss was just short of £3,000 but admitted that the maximum potential loss, should the offence not have been discovered, would have been up to £35,000. The prosecution argued that this figure would have been closer to £50,000.
He said: “The cost of immediate custody (for Tong and Hinkley) would be catastrophic not just for them but for the company.” Jasmine Kumar, for Armson, said her client was a mother of a 13-yearold daughter and accepted what she did was wrong but did it under “extreme pressure” from Tong.
She said: “She was a loyal, obedient, and subordinate employee who has a strong work ethic to support her family.”
On behalf of Neal, who is married with a six-year-old daughter, it was said she was “extremely remorseful” about what she did, which was “out of character”.
The hearing was told how father-of-two West carried out the offence while still in his probationary period and did so “because he was told his workers would not get paid if he didn’t opt them out” of the pension scheme.
Joe Harvey, for married father-of-two Tomlinson, an FA qualified football coach, said his client carried out the offence as he was “keen not to let the owners down”.
He said: “He did not do this to feather his own nest.”
And on behalf of Thorpe, a father-of-one who now runs his own recruitment agency that employs 12 people, the hearing was told how he “cooperated fully with the investigation and shows real remorse”.
Speaking after sentencing, Simon Broadhurst, litigation lawyer at TPR, said: “The punishment shows the court how serious these offences were.
“The success of workplace pensions must not be undermined by such unacceptable behaviour as happened at Workchain.
“Those who try to avoid their pension responsibilities should be prepared for heavy fines and criminal records.”
TPR prosecuted Workchain, which is now based in Derby, the two directors and five senior staff for an offence of unauthorised access to computer data, contrary to the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
This is the first time that TPR has launched prosecutions for this offence.
Workplace pensions must not be undermined by such behaviour. Simon Broadhurst