Romance fraud: British Asian woman jailed for stealing £1m from employer

A British Asian woman was sentenced to two years in prison for stealing nearly £1 million from her employer to help her online lover who did not exist.

Manjit Singh, 60, from Toxteth, was sentenced by Liverpool Crown Court on Monday (17) after she confessed to eight counts of fraud, according to reports.

She stole the funds from Lei Dat and Baig Solicitors, on Renshaw Street in Liverpoool city centre, where Singh was an employee since 2014.

Singh transferred £958,180 from her employers' accounts to another she believed belonged to Ravi Jani after meeting him on a dating site.

She told the court that she met Jani, who supposedly lived in Dubai, online on a site called asianshaadi.com and 'believed he wanted to marry her'.

Initially, he requested her assistance with a sum of 'a few thousand pounds'. However, he subsequently asked for larger payments, assuring her that he would reimburse the money.

Singh said she had spoken to the man on the phone around four to five times a day and had seen him "once or twice" on FaceTime.

Investigators found the stolen money had later been paid onwards into two other untraceable bank accounts.

Peter Killen, prosecuting, told the court Singh joined the firm in 2014 and by 2019, she had been trained and trusted to transfer money between client and office accounts and make payments under the supervision of owner Naeem Baig.

When Baig checked his business account on October 6, 2021, he was shocked to find the expected balance of £800,000 was just £40,000, media reports said.

He pointed out that eight transactions were made in the past two weeks all to the same account, Singh told him she had mistakenly made them from the company account instead of her own.

Baig was presented with a picture of a check from Jani, refunding the amount, along with screen captures of a bank account supposedly belonging to her partner, holding over $2,000,000.

Jani kept assuring Singh the money would be repaid but from October 7 onwards he stopped answering messages, the court heard.

When Singh's bank accounts were examined, there was no evidence she benefited financially in any way from the fraud.

"It’s just a stupid thing that I have done, thinking that I was helping someone. Then I end up getting myself caught, thinking the money would come back to the account and all would be ok," Singh was quoted as saying during the interview.

Defence lawyer said Singh has long-standing mental health problems and was going through a difficult time and was 'ripe for exploitation'.

"The amount stolen by you is, in truth, quite staggering. Not only were you a fraudster, you were also the victim of a fraud that has rightly been called a romance fraud," said Judge David Aubrey KC.

"You did not receive one penny for that which you did dishonestly. At the time, it is quite apparent you had been exploited. Much harm has been inflicted by your dishonest actions. The court also accepts that much harm has been inflicted on you."