Girl Guide leaders swindled £450,000 from Gift Aid to spend on holidays

Two sisters who swindled almost £450,000 worth of Gift Aid from HMRC while running Girl Guide groups have been jailed.

Sara and Jean Barnbrook defrauded taxpayers out of hundreds of thousands of pounds by claiming repayments on non-existent donations over six years.

Leeds Crown Court heard Sara Barnbrook, 54, fraudulently claimed more than £482,000 in Gift Aid repayments – of which £446,000 was paid out.

Her sister Jean Barnbrook, 51, helped to launder the money between 2013 and 2019.

The sisters then used the cash to spend on loan repayments, home improvements, clothes, hotels, travel and luxury items, the court heard.

A defending lawyer for Sara said she ‘couldn’t explain adequately why it spiralled out of control.’

On Monday, Sara was jailed for three years after pleading guilty to cheating the public revenue and Jean Barnbrook was jailed for 30 months after admitting to entering into a money laundering arrangement.

Prosecutor Angus MacDonald said, at the time of the offending, Jean and Sara ran two Girl Guide groups and one Brownies unit in Leeds.

He told the court: ‘Sara Barnbrook used the units to commit fraud against HMRC by exploiting the Gift Aid scheme – an income tax relief available to charities registered in the UK. It allows charities to reclaim 25% of any payments made.

‘Sara Barnbrook submitted fraudulent claims to HMRC, stating the three units had received £1.9 million in charitable donations over an eight-year period.’

The court heard the ‘donors’ named on the forms ‘had no knowledge their identities were being used in furtherance of fraud’.

Mr MacDonald said the fraud was so brazen some repayments were claimed after the Girl Guide units had closed down.

After the repayments were received, the money was withdrawn in cash or transferred to the sisters’ personal accounts.

The fraud was discovered after Jean called her bank in April 2019 to ask about a Gift Aid payment she claimed was expected by one of the Girl Guides units – which had been closed for 18 months.

A criminal investigation was launched by HRMC after the call. During the investigation, Sara forwarded a letter to HMRC from someone called ‘Louise’ taking responsibility for the Gift Aid claims.

Investigators found that ‘Louise’ was fictitious and the letter came from Jean Barnbrook’s computer.

Mr MacDonald said: ‘That letter was a last desperate attempt by these defendants to divert attention away from their offending.’

When Sara Barnbrook was arrested she said: ‘Jean had nothing to do with it,’ the court heard.

Anastasis Tasou, defending Sara, said she was a woman who ‘has never been in trouble for anything before’.

He told the court: ‘Thirty years of devoted and voluntary service to the Girl Guides should not be completely undermined by this fraud which began in 2013 and did go on for some considerable time – six years.

‘The fraud was born very shortly after the death of Ms Barnbrook’s mother and started off more as a desire to bring her standard of living up to a standard of living which most of us take for granted.’

Mr Tasou said Sara Barnbrook had had ‘a disadvantaged childhood and a disadvantaged adulthood’ and still maintained that a lot of the money was actually spent on the Girl Guides.

Glenn Parsons, defending Jean Barnbrook, said she was ‘absolutely dependent on her sister’, who had ‘substantially driven’ the fraud.

Judge Mushtaq Khokhar told the defendants: ‘This was a fraud against the public purse and when people such as you commit these offences, they commit those offences out of greed.

‘The perception seems to be that it is a victimless crime, but let me tell you, it is not a victimless crime – the victims are not just the state, but every taxpayer who contributes to the Exchequer.’

Tim Atkins, operational lead, of the HMRC’s Fraud Investigation Service, said: ‘These sisters stole money that was supposed to support genuine charities and they used it to fund a lifestyle they could not legitimately afford.

‘They used their position of trust to forge claims, and I hope these sentences serve as a warning to others that we can and do investigate abuse of the Gift Aid system.’

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