Couple Sentenced For Running Illegal Care Agency

Saraspedy & Mahendrasing

A couple who ran an illegal multi-million pound care agency, which stopped looking after an 81 year-old widow - with tragic consequences - after it was closed-down, were sentenced yesterday.

Former Shell secretary Gloria Foster was left dying on her own for nine days after the company she was paying £2,000 per-month to - CareFirst 24 - were shut-down for using illegal workers.

The Mauritian-born husband and wife team of police chief's daughter Saraspedy Caussyram, 54, and her husband, nurse Mahendrasing Caussyram, 51, had a lucrative contract with Sutton Council that alone was worth £500,000.

In just two years the bank account of their illegal operation was swelled by payments totalling £2.65m, Croydon Crown Court heard.

Mr. Caussyram was sentenced to three years imprisonment and disqualified from being a company director for five years.

Mrs Caussyram received twelve months imprisonment, suspended for two years, and will have to complete 150 hours community service work.

A hearing under the Proceeds of Crime Act will follow. 

The couple were both convicted unanimously by a jury of facilitating breaches of immigration law between January 1, 2011 and January 6, 2013 by engaging visa overstayers to work in the UK.

Mr. Caussyram alone was convicted of breaching immigration law between the same dates by engaging self-employed workers contrary to their visa restrictions.

Neglected: Gloria Foster

There were 54 mainly-Filipino students on their workforce, who were not legally entitled to work on a self-employed basis, and twelve of them should not even have been in the country.

None of them paid tax or National Insurance contributions.

The couple, of Burdon Lane, Sutton provided round the clock healthcare to the sick, disabled and elderly.

The police raid on January 15, 2013 meant Mrs Foster was abandoned in her ground-floor flat four miles away, where she had been seen four times a day by CareFirst 24 to be cleaned, dressed and fed.

She had dementia, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes and was found by a nurse nine days later suffering from dehydration, starvation and kidney failure - covered in her own faeces and soaked in urine.

Not Guilty: Omid Nabbey

Mrs Foster died on February 4 and an inquest ruled she died of 'natural causes contributed to by neglect' after hearing Surrey County Council, which had been informed of the names and addresses of vulnerable clients before the raid, failed to act in her case. 

Judge Peter Gower QC highlighted the advantages to the couple of having a self-employed workforce.

"No National Insurance contributions were payable, no sick pay, no holiday pay, no minimum wage, no travel expenses.

"Some twenty-four hour live-in workers were paid about half the minimum wage."

Prosecutor Mr. Andrew Evans told jury: "Their company employed overseas workers as self-employed contractors who worked as nurses and carers in order to service the company's lucrative private and public sector contracts.

"A significant number of these workers were working illegally beyond the terms and conditions of the visas that permitted them entry to the UK.

"The Caussyram's were responsible for ensuring those working under their remit were doing so legally. Instead they facilitated illegal working practises by continuing to allow them to work once their visas had expired"

Mrs Caussyram, a former midwife oversaw domestic care and Mr. Caussyram the nursing side of the business.

They were arrested after a Home Office investigation, which discovered the London Borough of Sutton paid their company half a million pounds for care provision between June 1, 2007 and January 13, 2013.  

The company's annual profits were between £123,585 and £393,793 and was run day-to-day with the assistance of Mauritian and Filipino managers.

"The rates of pay were not very good nor were the hours in particular instances. Some workers were live-in carers working twenty-four hours per day seven days a week," added Mr. Evans.

"There was a significant mark up in the rates charged to public sector clients when compared to the rates paid to carers"

Mr. Caussyram was described as "forceful" when insisting to his managers the work was lawful.

"The fact that tax was not paid on earnings was something foreseeable by the defendants as a consequence of the arrangements they put in place for their illegal workers," added Mr. Evans.  

CareFirst 24 provided services for Woking and Walton hospitals in Surrey, Surrey Primary Care Trust and Surrey County Council as well as Merton and Sutton councils.

"If local authorities had known that CareFirst 24 was providing services via carers not working lawfully in the UK…..those services would have been terminated and no further payment made."

The company was registered with regulator The Care Quality Commission, but the organisation was not told workers were all self-employed.

After their arrests the couple told investigators it was up to the company's management team to check the immigration status of the workers.

"There is clear compelling evidence that CareFirst 24 was engaging migrant workers on a self-employed basis in breach of their visas and or after their visas had expired.

"Equally clear is that the directors of CareFirst 24 undertook an active role in the recruitment of such workers and in controlling the company's position as regards the legality of their working on its behalf.

"CareFirst 24 provided Mr. and Mrs Caussyram with a significant income and it may be that for the exploitation of these overseas workers, who often worked long hours and were paid considerably less than the rates at which the services were charged, their income would not have been so great."

Their accountant, Omid Nabbey, 37, of Hartley Down, Purley - boss of Apple Payroll Solutions - who the prosecution claimed assisted the couple laundering their profits - was acquitted halfway through the trial. 

There is no suggestion of sub-standard care provided by their staff.