Civil Servant Who Secretly Held Five Government Jobs at Once Found Guilty of Fraud

A civil servant who secretly held five full-time government jobs at the same time has been found guilty of fraud, after a scheme that ran for more than three years and cost British taxpayers more than £284,000.

Kashim Chowdhury, 56, from east London, was convicted on Monday, 9 November 2026, at Southwark Crown Court in London. A jury found him guilty of nine counts of fraud after deliberating for about seven hours at the end of a two-week trial.

At the height of the deception, in the spring of 2023, Chowdhury was being paid a full-time salary by five different parts of the British government at once. His contracts added up to 183 hours of work a week — more hours than there are in a week.

The judge told him he faced a “very significant custodial sentence” and remanded him in custody. He will be sentenced at a later date.

What happened in court

Chowdhury’s trial lasted two weeks at Southwark Crown Court. Prosecutors told the jury he had carried out “deliberate, intentional dishonesty” and had exploited the system for financial gain.

The jury found him guilty on all nine counts. The verdicts were unanimous.

Judge Mark Weekes remanded Chowdhury in custody immediately after the verdicts. The prosecution suggested a starting point of five years in prison, with a sentencing range of three to six years.

The judge noted that Chowdhury had suffered mental health crises and said there were substantial grounds to believe he might seek to harm himself. He said the sentence Chowdhury faces offers “every incentive” not to surrender to custody, and pointed out that the defendant still had access to substantial funds.

Southwark Crown Court has hosted several high-profile cases this year, including the trial of Russell Brand, who was sentenced there to 10 years and six months in prison for rape and sexual assault.

The five jobs at once

Between 20 March and 31 May 2023, Chowdhury held five full-time jobs that each paid him a full-time salary. The five employers were:

• The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
• The UK Health Security Agency
• The Department for Business and Trade
• The Food Standards Agency
• The Home Office

He was contracted to work 183 hours a week across the five roles. A week has only 168 hours. In other words, even if he had worked every hour of every day without sleeping, eating or taking a break, he could not have done all five jobs properly.

But the five jobs were only the peak of a much longer pattern. Between February 2020 and September 2023, Chowdhury held eight overlapping full-time public sector roles and earned about £350,000 in total pay. Prosecutors said more than £280,000 of that was gross pay from months when he held more than one full-time job at the same time.

How the scheme started

Chowdhury began working for the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in February 2020. About a year later, in April 2021, he took a second full-time job with Defra. The two roles overlapped for more than a year.

In 2022, he added a third job, with the East London NHS Trust, which he held for four months. After leaving the council, he kept working for Defra while taking on more and more roles: the Department of Health and Social Care, the UK Health Security Agency, the Department for Business and Trade, the Food Standards Agency and the Home Office.

Each time he applied for a new job, prosecutors said, he lied about his employment status and history. His applications included declarations that he had given complete and true information, and that he understood that knowingly making a false statement was a criminal offence.

“He repeatedly misrepresented the true nature of his employment status, while continuing to receive full-time salaries from other public bodies,” said Sarah Melo, a specialist prosecutor at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

“This was sustained and deliberate dishonesty. He knew he could not legitimately hold multiple full-time positions at the same time, but continued to conceal what he was doing. His actions were motivated by financial gain.”

How he kept it hidden

Chowdhury worked entirely from home, and that was central to the deception. Prosecutors said he exploited the work-from-home culture that began during the Covid-19 pandemic, when remote working became normal across the civil service.

He told his employers he needed to work from home to care for his elderly mother, who was unwell. Working remotely meant no manager ever saw him walk into a different office, and no colleague noticed him doing another department’s work.

When the workload became too much, he took sick leave from some jobs while continuing to work in his others. Prosecutors said his performance eventually suffered because the workload became “too much to cope with”.

There was no evidence, the prosecution said, that he ever declared his employment status to anyone.

The make-up video call that raised suspicion

The first crack in the scheme appeared in May 2023, during a video call with his line manager at the UK Health Security Agency, Aleesha Adams.

Chowdhury had been on long-term sick leave from that role for nearly three months, and the meeting had been called to discuss his sickness. But his manager noticed something strange: he appeared to be wearing white face make-up to look unwell. He had put the make-up on his face but not on his neck, and as the meeting went on, the make-up on his forehead began to separate, revealing his skin underneath.

The manager also noticed that Chowdhury had logged into the meeting from a Defra email address. When challenged, he said he had used his personal laptop and claimed it was a “technical problem”.

The manager escalated her concerns. But the fraud was not uncovered at that point, and Chowdhury kept working his multiple jobs until he left the civil service in September 2023.

How he was finally caught

Chowdhury was finally caught by the government’s National Fraud Initiative, which searches civil service databases such as payroll every two years looking for anomalies. A data check revealed that he was employed simultaneously by two government departments.

He was arrested at his home in July 2023 and made no comment when interviewed under caution.

The investigation was led by Defra’s counter-fraud and investigations team, working with an accredited financial investigator, who established the full scale of what Chowdhury had earned from the fraud.

A Defra spokesperson said: “Kashim Chowdhury abused the trust placed in him as a public servant and defrauded taxpayers out of almost £285,000. He will now rightly face the consequences for his actions.”

“This conviction is the result of a thorough and painstaking investigation led by the Defra counter-fraud and investigations team. It sends a clear message that fraud against the public purse will not be tolerated and those responsible will be held to account.”

What he told the court

Chowdhury told the court that work was his “lifeline”. He said that around May and June 2022, his mother’s health had deteriorated, and that had overwhelmed him.

He said he had not been thinking clearly when applying for the jobs because of stress, distress and trauma and panic at the time, and that he took on the extra roles because he feared losing his livelihood after insecure employment.

The prosecution rejected that explanation. Prosecutor Lucy Organ told jurors that Chowdhury had made false representations about his existing employment when applying for the roles, and that “clearly, he would not have been employed by his employers if they had known he had multiple other full-time jobs”.

The CPS said it will now seek to recover Chowdhury’s fraudulent earnings through a proceeds of crime hearing, using the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Why this case matters

The case has raised serious questions about how Britain’s civil service hires and checks its staff. The civil service is not run from one central office: each department hires its own people, and there is no single human resources system that automatically flags when one person is employed by several departments at once.

Because Chowdhury did not declare on his application forms that he was already a civil servant, departments hiring independently had no way of spotting the duplication. The fraud only came to light through the National Fraud Initiative’s checks, which happen just once every two years.

The initiative has identified 23 similar cases across London in its most recent report, according to the BBC — suggesting Chowdhury is not the only person to have exploited the gap.

Defra said the government has recently strengthened employment checks to identify public sector fraud more quickly and protect taxpayer money.

What happens next

Chowdhury remains in custody and will be sentenced at a later date. The judge has warned him to expect a very significant prison sentence.

The CPS proceeds of crime team will also try to take back the money he gained from the fraud. The exact amount to be recovered will be decided at a separate hearing.

For the departments involved, the case is a warning. Five full-time salaries, 183 hours a week, three years of deception — and it took a routine data check, two years after the scheme began, to catch it.

Frequently asked questions

Who is Kashim Chowdhury?

Kashim Chowdhury is a 56-year-old former civil servant from east London. He was convicted of fraud on 9 November 2026 after secretly holding several full-time government jobs at the same time.

How many jobs did he hold at once?

At the peak, in the spring of 2023, he held five full-time government jobs simultaneously. Between 2020 and 2023 he held eight overlapping full-time public sector roles in total.

How much money did he take?

He fraudulently earned more than £284,000 of taxpayers’ money. His total pay from the eight roles between 2020 and 2023 was about £350,000.

How was he caught?

His UK Health Security Agency manager became suspicious in May 2023 after a video call in which he appeared to be wearing white make-up to look ill and logged in from another department’s email address. He was finally exposed by a National Fraud Initiative data check of civil service payroll records, and arrested at his home in July 2023.

Has he been sentenced yet?

No. He was remanded in custody after the verdicts and will be sentenced at a later date — no date has been fixed yet.

Conclusion

Kashim Chowdhury’s case is remarkable not just for its audacity, but for how long it went unnoticed. Five salaries, 183 contracted hours a week, eight jobs in three years — all hidden behind remote working, sick notes and application forms that nobody checked against each other.

The jury’s verdicts end the deception, but the questions it raises will last longer. How did a system designed to serve the public fail to notice one man drawing five salaries? And how many others have found the same gaps? The government’s answer — stronger employment checks — will be tested by whatever the National Fraud Initiative finds next.

For now, Chowdhury waits in custody for his sentence, which has not yet been fixed, and the taxpayer waits to see how much of the £284,000 can be recovered.

Sources

• Crown Prosecution Service, “Former civil servant found guilty of fraud for holding multiple jobs at the same time”, 9 November 2026: https://www.cps.gov.uk/national-news/news/former-civil-servant-found-guilty-fraud-holding-multiple-jobs-same-time
• BBC News, “Civil servant who secretly held five jobs found guilty of fraud”, 9 November 2026: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm70pgnx891do
• BBC News, “How a civil servant got away with juggling five jobs for so long”, 9 November 2026: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw1m4d8vjvppo
• Glasgow Times / PA Media, “Fraudster job-juggling civil servant faces jail as world ‘collapses around him'”, 9 November 2026: https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/national/26713485.fraudster-job-juggling-civil-servant-faces-jail-world-collapses-around-him/

This article is for general information and education only. It is not legal or financial advice.