Gambling addict stole £680,000 from bosses and blew it in casinos
A GAMBLING addict stole £680,000 from her employers and blew almost all of it in online casinos.
Anjna Aggarwal placed such big bets that she was granted VIP status and given access to betting advisers.
Playing slots, table games and poker, the 37-year-old gambled away £681,942, winning back just £98,000.
At the same time the airport catering firm she worked for was considering laying off staff to try to balance its books.
She was finally caught after an internal probe and was yesterday starting a fouryear prison sentence for fraud.
Aggarwal joined Alpha LSG, which is based at Manchester Airport, as an agency worker. She took up a full-time position in the accounts department in 2012 and was promoted to supervisor on £24,500 a year. She embarked on the scam in 2014, using the traditional book-keeping fraud known as ‘teeming and lading’.
It involves delaying and misallocating payments to hide a shortfall.
Lisa Boocock, prosecuting, told Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester that 83 per cent of the false transactions related to British Airways.
‘She had in excess of 12 bank accounts to which she credited money,’ said Miss Boocock. ‘She was quite calculating in her method to conceal what she was doing.’
Aggarwal opened and closed five Halifax accounts over six weeks. ‘She would transfer the money to one account and sometimes in two to three days that money would be in other accounts,’ Miss Boocock said.
Olivia Renee, a 49-year-old single mother, became involved in the scam to try to clear her debts. Aggarwal suggested transferring £90,000 to her bank account with Renee keeping £23,000 and moving the rest on.
Miss Boocock said: ‘When Renee asked what she should do if she was detected the defendant told her that she should say she had just lost a baby and the money was compensation for the loss of that child.’
Police were called in last January following the internal audit.
Miss Boocock said: ‘Aggarwal said she had started taking the money in order to pay for her dying mother’s operation and her father’s debts, and she accepted gambling £7,000 of the money. But she gambled at such a rate she was a VIP customer in betting shops and she had her own advisers to assist her in her gambling.’
In a statement, Alpha LSG’s financial director, Ian Uken, said: ‘This is not a faceless company. She was calculating and organised in the way that she went about covering up her actions. It was at a time that the company was experiencing a loss and we were considering redundancies, so for her to continue shows how little she
‘Calculating and organised’
thought of other workers.’ Aggarwal, of Lower Broughton, Salford, admitted fraud, false accounting and money laundering. Renee, of Ardwick, Manchester, admitted money laundering and was jailed for a year.
Passing sentence, Judge Tina Landale told Aggarwal: ‘This was a gross breach of trust. You used your position to manipulate accounts and falsify documents and you used a calculating method to carry out your frauds.
‘This complex fraud had serious consequences for the company, a number of employees were under suspicion and that had an effect on morale – yet you ploughed on with your fraud regardless.’
Alpha LSG said Aggarwal had passed rigorous background checks before her appointment and insisted controls had been strengthened to prevent similar offences. ‘None of our customers were financially impacted by this very sophisticated fraud,’ it insisted.