David Cameron's former advisor Emma Harrison founded the company A4e, where 10 former workers have been jailed for a large-scale fraud . Six former employees of a welfare-to-work firm were jailed yesterday for forging files in a scam that cost the taxpayer almost £300,000. They became involved in the massive fraud through a ‘culture of dishonesty’ at A4e, which was founded by David Cameron’s millionaire former jobs tsar Emma Harrison. Another four ex-members of staff received suspended prison sentences for what Judge Angela Morris said were ‘deceitful and unscrupulous’ practices. In a telling aside, she said it was not for her to decide whether more senior managers should also be held to account. The ten people sentenced yesterday falsified employer details, time sheets and jobseeker signatures to inflate the numbers they said they had helped into work. The Department of Work and Pensions paid A4e a £1,775 bounty for each of the first 500 candidates it helped into jobs, and then £888 for every successful placement after that. It was paid for 558 successes – but nearly a third of these proved to be faked. The cost to the public purse was around £288,000. The scam was based on a programme called Inspire to Aspire and designed to assist single parents in the Thames Valley to find jobs. It earned A4e more than £1.3million between August 2008 and June 2011. Some of the employees received considerable bonuses in their monthly pay packets as a result of their fakery. Genuine jobseekers whose names were used for the fraud when they did not in fact take part in the scheme may have had their benefits reduced or stopped. Passing sentence at Reading Crown Court, Judge Morris attacked the failure of A4e managers to impose checks on whether claims submitted to the DWP were valid. ‘The lack of any independent verification procedure in this case allowed a number of employees to engage in deceitful and unscrupulous practices for their own or another’s financial gain at the expense of the public purse,’ she said. A whistleblower alerted senior management to the fraud in November 2010, but files continued to be forged until March 2011. The judge said ‘innumerable’ files were ‘nothing more than wholesale forgeries from start to finish’. Staff members at A4e forged client signatures, time sheets and employers' details to make it look like they had got more people through back-to-work courses and into jobs between 2008 and 2011 . The judge added: ‘In this case there is a considerable volume of documents which have been totally fabricated, manipulated, back-dated or altered in other ways in an effort to give a wholly misleading impression about the way that the contract was being implemented.’ A4e recruiter Julie Grimes, 52, from Staines, Surrey, who was jailed for 26 months, was put under huge pressure to meet unrealistic targets by managers who did not care how she met them, the court heard. Her barrister Steven Pidcock said: ‘She was immersed in a culture of dishonesty that she didn’t have the moral fibre to resist. ‘It doesn’t start from the roots - this sort of thing starts from the top of the tree.’ Dean Lloyd, 38, of Milton Keynes, who received a 15-month sentence, had no idea about the ‘dishonesty intrinsic in A4e’ until after he had accepted the job, the hearing was told. His lawyer Rhodri James said: ‘To some extent it almost seemed acceptable because those who worked there, particularly in the hierarchy, were so entrenched in their dishonest practices.’ Contract manager Ines Cano-Uribe, 39, of Madrid, was jailed for 18 months, while Charles McDonald, 44, of Egham, Surrey, who faked documents to get bonuses to support his drug habit, received a sentence of 40 months. Judge Angela Morris, sentencing the group to 15 years in prison at Reading Crown Court today, said they had carried out 'deceitful and unscrupulous practices' during their work on the contract . There was also a prison term of 22 months for Nikki Foster, 31, of Reading, and one of 15 months for Bindiya Dholiwar, 29, of Slough. Suspended 12-month sentences were given to Zabar Khalil, 35, of Slough, Matthew Hannigan-Train, 31, of Bristol, and Hayley Wilson, 27, of Milton Keynes. Aditi Singh, 32, of Slough received a ten-month suspended sentence. Cano-Uribe, Khalil, Hannigan-Train and Hayley Wilson had denied forgery, but were found guilty by a jury after a trial that lasted for 12 weeks. The other six pleaded guilty. A4e Group chief executive Andrew Dutton said: ‘We are obviously disappointed and sorry that there were people working for us on this historical contract who behaved dishonestly, and in doing so let down the customers we had intended them to help and the taxpayer. ‘A4e long ago set aside the money to pay back the DWP the amount it received as a result of the unsubstantiated claims and we have ensured that the taxpayer will have lost nothing from the conduct of the people involved.’ Emma Harrison, 51, built A4e - formerly called Action for Employment - into an operation spanning 11 counties and became a multimillionaire . The scandal of the massive taxpayer fraud at A4e was exposed by the Daily Mail three years ago. A series of whistleblowers came forward in 2012 to speak out about a highly-pressurised culture where many employees forged documents to make it look like they were meeting impossible targets. The company would then submit fraudulent claims for payment by the taxpayer based on getting more jobseekers into work than it had actually achieved, the insiders alleged. A4e, formerly called Action For Employment, was set up to retrain redundant Sheffield steelworkers in 1991. Founder Emma Harrison, 51, built the company into an operation spanning 11 countries. She became a multi-millionaire and was appointed David Cameron’s ‘back to work’ tsar in December 2010. But she was widely criticised for paying herself an £8.6million dividend in 2011 – when A4e’s entire £180million UK turnover came from state contracts – even though her firm had failed to meet Government targets for finding jobs for the unemployed. An internal A4e audit in 2009 found widespread allegations of fraud, including business owners being asked to sign blank jobs forms. The review also said the company had falsely claimed it had found positions for people and payments being claimed for applicants who stayed in the post for only one day. The whistleblowers told the Mail that the problems at A4e were ‘endemic’. The firm strenuously denied the allegations, insisting the fraud was confined to staff at its Slough office. But the claims painted a disturbing picture. In Bradford, whistleblowers showed a forgery kit consisting of rubber stamps they said had been used to defraud the taxpayer of £2,000 for every ‘clunk’ of the stamp. In Newcastle, another whistleblower said the taxpayer was cheated by staff being forced to pose as jobless clients and actually sit numeracy and literacy exams alongside the unemployed, in order meet money-spinning quotas. Manchester staff apparently forged signatures by pressing sheets of paper up to sunlit windows to trace the names. Following the Mail’s revelations, A4e denied all wrongdoing and said the issues were confined to local staff. Mrs Harrison quit as the PM’s ‘family champion’ in February 2012.
Ten workers from employment firm A4e found guilty of large-scale fraud . Forged signatures, time sheets and employers' details to claim bonuses . They were working on Government's contract to help jobseekers get work . Reading Crown Court heard they claimed nearly £288,595 from taxpayers . Judge Angela Morris sentenced group of 10 workers to a total of 15 years . A4e was founded by the PM's former 'back to work Tsar' Emma Harrison .