A British army quartermaster defrauded the UK government out of almost £500,000 worth of supplies after feeling under pressure from his girlfriend to prove he was rich.
Jed Charlot, 45, who was married, placed more than 600 orders for printers and toner and sold the items on eBay, using the proceeds to buy designer gear including watches. He has been jailed for three years for using taxpayers’ money to place the fraudulent orders.
He joined the army in 2007 having previously been a police officer and worked his way through the ranks to become quartermaster sergeant (QMS) with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in Tidworth, Wiltshire.
A QMS is responsible for supplies and stores in the military and earns on average £38,000 a year.
Charlot began an affair in June 2021, Salisbury crown court heard. His fraudulent behaviour commenced when his girlfriend started to “pressure” him over holidays.
He used his Ministry of Defence email to order printers and toner from an army contractor before selling them on to companies in the UK and US. In total he took £487,919.80 in equipment and made £349,120.68 from selling it on before being caught when an MoD administrator found they were short of printers and toner.
Tom Wilkins, prosecuting, said: “Between late 2021 and the end of 2022 the defendant ordered printers and toner cartridges from a company in Nottingham. The fraud was discovered by a civilian administrator preparing for an operation in Germany, they were short of printers. She saw the defendant’s unit had spent grossly in excess of the procurement budget.”
Wilkins said the fraud was traced back to Charlot and he was confronted by a senior officer. “The defendant claimed he had been hacked. He was arrested following further enquiries, his home was searched and police found a Louis Vuitton handbag, two Tag Heuer watches, a Garmin exercise watch and a Mont Blanc pen,” the prosecutor said.
“To keep the orders below the threshold at which a red flag would have been raised the defendant made 676 orders over about a year.”
In a message to an undisclosed recipient in October 2022 Charlot said he could obtain more money to freeze his own sperm in case he was jailed.
Mary Cowe, defending, said the offence was “inexplicable” given Charlot’s previous “exemplary conduct”. She said: “He has done therapy … he is realising that is how he should have dealt with this rather than creating this Walter Mitty-style existence.”
Judge Taylor told Charlot: “You began having an affair, you told your mistress you were rich, which was not true. In November 2021 she was pressuring you and asking: ‘If you have got all of this money, why aren’t we going on holiday? You used some of the money to buy clothes and gifts for family.”
Charlot, of Andover in Hampshire, left the army in June 2024. He pleaded guilty to one count of fraud.
Source: theguardian.com
