Between February 2020 and September 2023, 55-year-old Kashim Chowdhury allegedly collected nearly £350,000 across five simultaneous full-time public sector roles. The BBC reported that the defendant is currently on trial at Southwark Crown Court, facing nine fraud charges. Chowdhury denies any dishonest behavior or intent to profit through deceptive means.
The Video Call Disguise and Overlapping Bureaucracies
Prosecutors detailed an extraordinary moment during the trial when Chowdhury allegedly attempted to mask his physical absence while juggling his workloads. In 2023, Alisha Adams, a manager at the UK Health Security Agency, scheduled a video call with Chowdhury to discuss his ongoing sick leave. Adams testified that Chowdhury applied white makeup to his face to fake an illness, but the cosmetics began peeling away from his skin while he was simultaneously drawing salaries from five different full-time positions.
Civil servant Kashim Chowdhury accused of robbing the taxpayer of almost £350,000 by holding five jobs totalling more hours than exist in a weekA 55-year-old civil servant is on trial at Southwark Crown Court accused of fraudulently holding multiple full-time public-sector jobs… pic.twitter.com/xlLAbkdsb3
According to court testimony, lead prosecutor Lucy Organ told the jury that Chowdhury undoubtedly painted his face to fool his direct superior into believing he was incapacitated. Organ described the incident as a farcical example of the lengths to which the defendant went to pull off the scheme.
Capitalizing on Pandemic Remote Work Policies
The prosecution maintains that Chowdhury exploited the remote work culture introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic. He allegedly secured the positions by making false representations regarding his employment status during the application processes. Court testimony revealed that he frequently told employers he needed to work from home to care for a sick mother.
However, the sheer volume of work generated by holding five concurrent full-time jobs eventually became unsustainable, causing his overall performance to decline across the departments. While medical documentation showed he had been issued sick notes for “mixed anxiety and depressive disorder”—permitting him leave from certain duties—he reportedly failed to submit these sick notes consistently across all of his employers.
The alleged multi-job scheme finally unraveled after the National Fraud Initiative issued an alert to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, prompting a deeper investigation into the overlapping payrolls.
