Bosses at Cumbrian waste disposal firm CAW Ltd have pleaded guilty to cheating Cumbria county council out of £100,000 by exaggerating the amount of rubbish the company had collected.

 
Three people - including the firm's managing director - said they told the council that the firm was handling more waste than it actually was in order to generate more income.

They were all employees of CAW Ltd of Barrow-in-Furness, which ran seven Cumbria county council civic amenity sites until its contract was terminated in January 2007

When the defendants first appeared in court in 2008, they faced charges alleging that they had charged the council £3.5 million more than they were entitled to.

However, the offence they admitted at Carlisle Crown Court on Wednesday (June 3,2009) involved an overpayment of around £100,000 and covered three months rather than the original four years.

Difficult
A spokesman for Cumbria county council said: "The county council is pleased that the criminals responsible for this fraud against Cumbrian taxpayers have now acknowledged their wrongdoing by pleading guilty in court.

"This has been a complicated and difficult prosecution but the council is pleased that county council officers, trading standards and the police have been able to work effectively together to bring these individuals to justice."

Those who admitted being involved in the fraud were CAW Ltd's managing director Dave Armer, the firm's general manager Donald Andrew Kershaw, and yard worker Peter Newton.

They all pleaded guilty to conspiring together dishonestly to obtain money transfers for CAW Ltd from Cumbria county council by misrepresenting the quantities of household waste collected from civic amenity sites between August 31 and December 6 2006.

The charge stated that they did this by "inflating the quantities of household waste actually collected and disposed of and including quantities which had not been collected and disposed of."

The defendants pleaded not guilty to conspiring to obtain money transfers by misrepresenting the quantities of fridge freezers collected at civic amenity sites and disposed of by CAW Ltd.

These charges were ordered to lie on the court file and will not be proceeded with. The three men were all remanded on bail for background reports and will be sentenced on July 23.

Three other people - accounts manager Anne Kirkwood, 53, yard worker Henry Webster, 20, and Sarah Thompson, 34, who is Newton's daughter- all pleaded not guilty to the same charges. Their cases too were ordered to be left on the court file and will not be proceeded with.

Civil
Prosecuting counsel, Anthony Watson QC, told Carlisle Crown Court that action in the civil courts was likely to be taken against Armer, Kershaw and CAW Ltd.

The county council spokesman confirmed: "The people concerned have been responsible for defrauding the council and the council taxpayer of significant sums and proceedings are already underway in the civil courts to try to recover this money."

In the civil case the council is likely to accuse the three men of a longer period of fraudulent behaviour and also attempt to recover a larger amount of money. This could be as much as £3.5 million, which the men were originally accused of obtaining.