Covid loans conman is jailed for more than 17 years

A CONMAN who fleeced banks and a Covid loans scheme out of £1.5m has been jailed for more than 17 years.

- ROB KENNEDY

And his accomplice, who is on the run, has been handed a 20-year jail term in his absence.

Through ‘shell’ companies, Sundeep Chahal operated a sophisticated fraud, alongside Timothy Paul Nellis, from which money was laundered and used to finance organised crime group activities, such as setting up cannabis farms and selling unlicensed prescription medicines.

Nellis spun a web of lies, setting up a series of shell companies to trick financial institutions and then the taxpayer out of vast sums.

Newcastle Crown Court heard the police investigation into these activities began “fortuitously” when Nellis did not pay a hotel bill for a room he had been renting between October 2018 and April 2019, having paid £6,850 over that period.

As a result, housekeeping entered the room at Gosforth Grand Park Hotel, Newcastle, where they found a large number of mobile phones, documents and other items which hotel staff found to be suspicious.

They informed the police, who found an “office” containing paperwork, documentation, crib sheets of directors and banking details, credit and debit cards and burner phones which each related to numerous companies being run from that hotel room. Around 30 ‘shell’ companies were being controlled by Nellis and everything he required to control them was within the hotel room.

The companies were investigated and it unearthed a sophisticated fraud, run by Nellis and Sundeep Chahal, from which money was laundered and used to finance organised crime group activities.

The series of shell companies were used to make others appear to be legitimate going concerns, with invoices to be paid, such that financial institutions — Ultimate Finance, Lloyds Bank, Aldermore Bank and Barclays Bank - felt confident to offer finance to the companies in return for a proportion of those invoices value, a financial product called factoring.