A three-man gang of Nigerian fraudsters have been jailed in London for more than 16 years after using the names of more than 200 dead children for VAT fraud.

Their target was to make one million pounds, but they had barely siphoned 250,000 pounds, when they were caught.

The Mail Online reported that the trio, Saheed Oyeneye, 35, Rasaq Omotunde, 38, and Oluwakemi Adesegun, 38, all from south east London, set up hundreds of bogus online HMRC accounts to ‘get rich quick’ off the public purse.

Here is the Mail Online report:
The Nigerian-born adopted false identities of hundreds of unsuspecting victims, mirroring the tactic employed by the assassin in The Day of the Jackal, as part of his plot to shoot French president Charles de Gaulle.

In a scenario similar to that of the Frederick Forsyth novel, the trio men stole the identities of more than 200 dead British babies, before using their names to bombard the government with tax repayment applications.

They also adopted the identities of sports personalities, including cricketers and rugby union stars, by scouring the internet for their personal details and cobbling together a fake profile.

The three men also targeted thousands of members of the public as they attempted to swindle £1m, Southwark Crown Court was told.

In total, the gang managed to pocket around £250,000, which was banked across hundreds of accounts which had been set up under false names.

But the trio were rumbled early on by HMRC and did not pay out more than three-quarters of the money.

Judge Stephen Robbins jailed Oyeneye for five and a half years, Omotunde for six years and Adesegun for five years.

Read more in Mail Online: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2981497/Fraudsters-used-names-200-dead-children-launder-profits-attempted-1m-VAT-fraud-jailed-16-years.html