A 56-year-old civil servant from east London has been found guilty of nine counts of fraud after secretly holding several full-time public sector positions at the same time. A jury returned a unanimous verdict after seven hours of deliberation, convicting Kashim Chowdhury on eight counts of fraud by false representation and one count of fraud by failure to disclose.
Between 2020 and 2023, Chowdhury maintained eight full-time government roles that overlapped, resulting in total earnings of £350,000.
During the spring of 2023 alone, he juggled five concurrent positions across several government departments, including the Home Office, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Department of Health and Social Care, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), the Department for Business and Trade, and the Food Standards Agency. He was made redundant from a job at the Department for Education in 2013 and was given a diagnosis of PTSD.
Prosecutors noted that during this period, he was contracted to work 183 hours a week, a timeframe that exceeds the total number of hours in seven days.
The prosecution characterized his actions as deliberate, intentional dishonesty, accusing him of exploiting the system to fraudulently secure more than £284,000. Court evidence revealed that Chowdhury provided inaccurate information on his employment applications and failed to inform departments of his status as an existing civil servant. He had successfully requested to work entirely from home by claiming he was the primary caregiver for his mother, who lived with him in east London and was suffering from dementia and terminal cancer. He kept taking on new jobs, but rather than reduce his workload to look after her. The prosecution argued that he used sick notes to cope with his impossible schedule.
Despite his claims that past redundancy and trauma led him to panic-apply for roles, prosecutors argued he displayed a high level of deceit. Barrister Lucy Organ noted he repeatedly lied under oath. His performance was consistently flagged as poor by managers, with one supervisor at Defra reporting that he often kept his camera off during calls, claiming technical difficulties. He reportedly managed to maintain his positions for two years at Defra because he was not subjected to formal performance reviews. Once he secured the roles he didn’t tell his employers he was working elsewhere. According to he, He had not been thinking clearly when applying for jobs ”because of my stress, distress and trauma and due to my panic at the time”. She told the jury that at the start of the call he was coughing a lot and waving tissues up to the camera.
The investigation into his activities intensified after his line manager at the UKHSA, Aleesha Adams, grew suspicious during a May 2023 video call intended to discuss his return to work after three months of sick leave. He was on sick leave from four of the organisations he worked for, in March 2023.
Adams testified that Chowdhury appeared to be wearing white makeup to simulate illness, which began to rub off during the meeting, revealing darker skin underneath. After noticing he had logged into the call using a Defra email address, Adams escalated her concerns. While he denied wearing makeup, labeling the claim a smear, he remained in the civil service until September 2023. It was like rubbing off so it was darker underneath and darker on the neck, adams told the court that as the meeting went on the make-up started coming off his forehead. ”He was sweating.
Chowdhury was eventually identified in 2024 through the National Fraud Initiative, a government program that periodically cross-references payroll databases to detect anomalies. Following the guilty verdict, the presiding judge refused bail, citing the severity of the offenses and concerns for the defendant’s wellbeing. The court warned that Chowdhury faces a very significant custodial sentence. He added he was refusing bail because of the significance of the crime and for Chowdhury’s own wellbeing.
