PPE scam leader who bought Rolexes and luxury cars with help of Lancashire man is jailed for fraud

The leader of a PPE fraud who bought Rolexes and luxury cars after scamming companies out of millions of pounds during the Covid-19 pandemic has been jailed for eight years.

Jogesh Bhandari, 60, spent £126,000 on a Porsche and bought an Audi A5, a Land Rover Discovery, jewellery and holiday packages after pretending he could supply millions of boxes of nitrile gloves in the US and Germany between late 2020 and early 2022.

Bhandari and 43-year-old Craig Morris, of All Saints Road in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, who helped him carry out the sham deals, were found guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation and money laundering at the end of a five-week trial at Leicester Crown Court. Morris was previously sentenced to three years and nine months in prison

Meenakshi Bhandari, 58, Bhandari’s wife and a former pharmacist, was found guilty of money laundering after the couple made luxury purchases and paid off family debt.

Sentencing Jogesh Bhandari at Northampton Crown Court on Friday, Judge William Harbage KC said the defendant was the “driving force” of the offending as the “directing mind” of Banton, the company used by him and Morris to make fraudulent deals.

The judge said remorse expressed by Bhandari, of Mitchell Drive in Loughborough, Leicestershire, in a letter to the court is “difficult to accept given how vigorously you contested these charges”.

Bhandari defrauded US company Med18 and German firm MedTech by sending contracts for equipment he did not have, the court heard.

The fraud began in November 2020 when Bhandari agreed a deal to provide 12 million boxes of gloves and a company paid into a fraudulent escrow account provided by Frank Labruzzo, a US assistant attorney general at the Louisiana State Department of Justice.

Rather than money remaining in the account until the deal was complete, it was immediately paid to Labruzzo and Bhandari.

Millions of pounds were paid into the account, including a payment of more than 3.18 million dollars in early 2021 for an order of nitrile gloves to be sent to US hospitals that were never delivered.

The court heard Bhandari kept £1.75 million in the course of the fraud.

Morris, who is a father of two teenage children, bought a house with money given to him by Bhandari and received regular £5,000 payments, the court previously heard.

Bhandari attempted to take his own life after being convicted and has impending divorce proceedings, defence barrister Dominic Bardill said.

In his letter, which was partly read aloud, Bhandari wrote that he has “destroyed the life of the woman I truly love with all my heart”, adding that “now she despises me”.

The court heard Bhandari also pretended to have cancer, which Mr Bardill said was a “spur of the moment lie” because the defendant was “completely out of his depth”.

Mr Bardill told the court: “There is an element of using the dishonesty to run away from the stress, pressure and consequences of those actions.”

He added: “This man standing before you, up until this point, has been a man of good character, a family man, a man who brought up two children. It was a mixture of greed, a mixture of, as I say, terrible decision making. When I say he’s lost everything, I’m deadly serious. He really has lost everything because of that offence.”

Mr Bardill said Bhandari is “extremely anxious” about how his health issues, which include a pacemaker he recently had fitted, will be dealt with in prison.

Last week, Bhandari’s wife was handed a two-year prison sentence, suspended for two years, 250 hours of unpaid work and 15 days of rehabilitation activity.

Morris was sentenced to three years and nine months in prison.

Bhandari failed to turn up to the sentencing hearing last week, telling Mr Bardill he was taking a “very extreme painkiller” and could not come to court.

The judge sentenced the other defendants in Bhandari’s absence and had issued a bench warrant for him.

Labruzzo and another person involved in the fraud have been convicted and sentenced in the US.