Businessman Billed Taxpayer For 60,000 Miles In Taxis During £176,000 Four-Year Scam

A partially-sighted escort agency boss illegally pocketed almost £176,000 in benefits, including a massive claim for approximately 60,000 miles in non-existent taxi rides under a government disability scheme.

Businessman Andrew Pishides, 39, billed the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for daily 100 mile round-trip £180 fares for four years - supporting the claims with forged receipts.

"You must have lived very well for those four years," Harrow Crown Court Judge Jeremy Donne QC told Pishides, who ran 'Escort Emporium', 'Escort Solutions' and a letting agency for parking spaces called 'Park Let'.

"These offences reflect a moderately sophisticated and extremely persistent fraud that garnered you just shy of one hundred and eighty thousand pounds.

"The benefits represented an income of over forty thousand a year and in addition you had legitimate sources of twenty thousand a year, which would have been equivalent to a six-figure salary before tax."

Pishides, of Alexander House, Broadfields Way, Neasden was sentenced to eight months imprisonment, suspended for two years, placed on a twelve month supervision order with a three-month electronically-tagged evening curfew.

"Is it right that you should go to prison for four-and-a-half months? I confess I find this difficult," announced the judge. "I have a clear public duty to deal with people who commit offences like these, but on balance i am persuaded a prison sentence can be suspended."

Pishides pleaded guilty to three counts of obtaining money transfers by deception, namely £106,000 in access to work payments; £37,328 in housing benefit; £28, 637 in income support and evading a liability by deception, namely £3,874 in council tax.

DWP investigators mounted a surveillance operation, which confirmed their suspicions that Pishides did not travel from his home in north-west London to Wrotham in rural Kent three times a week to work as a software salesman.

The access to work scheme offers financial assistance with travel costs to those with disabilities.

He also failed to declare all of his bank accounts, his business income and part-ownership of a mortgage-free Lewisham flat.

Investigators discovered hundreds of pounds a week were being paid into Pishides' bank account from a large number of women who had signed-up to be his escorts.

The DWP are pursuing compensation under the Proceeds of Crime Act and are currently deducting £100 per month from Pishides' disability living allowance payments.

Pishides' lawyer Mr. James Maloney told the court: "The risk of re-conviction is low, the public is not at risk from the defendant. 

"His disability would make imprisonment more stressful and difficult than able-bodied defendants and he would be vulnerable to those in the system with more know-how than him."

Pishides suffers from a genetic eye condition, which restricts his field of vision to only 10% and he needs times four magnification in his right eye - his best - to see normally.

"He lost a lot of his life skills, his confidence, his self-esteem and did fall into some form of depression," added Mr. Maloney. "He is genuinely resourceful about this."

Judge Donne added: "He was pretty well off compared to a lot of people and it must have been apparent to him that what he was doing was quite egregious.

"What is the court to do with someone who commits offences on this scale for this period of time?

"However, it is a simple fact prison would be more difficult for someone with his difficulties and I have wrestled in my mind as to the correct sentence in this case."