Five fraudsters who pretended to be making a Hollywood blockbuster as part of a £2.8m VAT and film tax credits scam are jailed.
VAT inspectors were told that A-listers from Hollywood would star in a £19.6m production that would be shot entirely in the UK.
The fraudsters made attempts to claim £2.7m in VAT and tax credits designed to help genuine British filmmakers.
They actually received £796,000 of public money through a series of bogus companies – none of which has been recovered.
But officials grew suspicious when the only footage produced was seven minutes of “completely unusable quality”, Southwark crown court, in central London, heard.
To cover their tracks, the fraudsters quickly set about making a film on a shoestring budget of £84,000 called A Landscape of Lies, drafting in unwitting actors and filmmakers.
That production went on to win a prize at the 2012 Las Vegas Film Festival.
Bashar Al-Issa, 34, a former Iraqi national who is now British, of west London, described as the orchestrator of the fraud, was jailed for six-and-a-half years by Judge Juliet May.
He convinced Loose Women presenter, Andrea McLean, 43, into starring as bisexual therapist Dr Audrey Grey in low-budget film A Landscape Of Lies. Ex-EastEnders star Marc Bannerman was also cast. Both were unaware that it was all part of a plan to cover up a £2.7m scam.
Al-Issa was described as the mastermind of the fraud by prosecutor Rebecca Chalkley after being convicted of two counts of conspiracy to cheat the public revenue.
She added: “He is the principal organiser and originator of the fraud and most certainly the prime beneficiary.”
Actor Aoife Madden, 31, a British and Irish national, from west London, said to have submitted a “pack of lies” to inspectors about the project, was sentenced to four years and eight months.
She helped successfully scam HMRC into thinking the blockbuster was being produced despite showing them just eight minutes of non-broadcast quality footage filmed in her flat for £5,000.
Southwark crown court was also told how she falsely claimed to have paid Hollyoaks actress Christina Bailey £400,000 for starring in A Landscape of Lives – a fraction of the fee she was paid for appearing in A Landscape of Lies.
Describing Madden’s organisational role, Ms Chalkley said the documents she prepared were a “tissue of lies”.
She added: “The prosecution accepts that at the outset she wanted to make a film and may have believed this was a genuine project. There came a point, however, when that changed.”
Ms Chalkley continued: “This not a film production. It was a charade. The whole purpose was to steal money from the public purse.”
Two other defendants in the scam – Tariq Hassan, 52, a Pakistani national, of Loughton, Essex, and Osama Al Baghdady, 51, an Iraqi national from Crumpsall, Manchester, received four-year jail sentences.
A fifth defendant, architect Ian Sherwood, 53, of Sale, Manchester, who allowed his offices to be used for the fraud, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail.
All five defendants were also disqualified from holding company directorships – Al-Issa for 10 years; Madden for eight years; and Hassan, Al-Baghdady and Sherwood for five years.
The court heard that Madden, said by the prosecution as having played an important organisational role in the fraud, pleaded guilty at the start of the trial to two charges of conspiracy to cheat the public revenue between April 2010 and April 2011 related to VAT repayments and film tax credits.
Al-Issa was convicted on both charges after a trial. Hassan was convicted of one charge – conspiracy to cheat the revenue in relation to film tax credits.
Al Baghdady and Sherwood were convicted of one charge of conspiracy to cheat the revenue in relation to VAT repayments.