WIREDGOV

A family who obtained £150,000 in fraudulent Bounce Back Loans (BBL) during the Covid-19 pandemic to fund house renovations, credit card debt and school fees have been sentenced following a National Crime Agency (NCA) investigation.

Kashid Rashid, 53, from Ilford, his wife, Noreen Malik, 46, nephew Rehaan Mohammed, 32, and brother Rizwan Haider, 61, set up or used a number of bogus businesses to fraudulently apply for £50,000 a time in business relief organised during the pandemic.

They used three businesses to successfully apply for three Bounce Back Loans totalling £150,000, and also submitted one further unsuccessful application where they would have received a further £50,000, after they were announced by the government as a tool to help businesses stay afloat during the pandemic.

In each case, the defendants cited they had been adversely affected by the pandemic and claiming inflated annual turnovers to qualify for the maximum loan.

Kashid Rashid

Once received, the money was sent to other members of the family, businesses they controlled, or used to pay for house renovations, private school fees, vehicles and trailers.

Voice notes recovered by the NCA showed Rashid discussing the need to create false invoices to support the application.

In July 2020, Rashid was in conversation with a company to arrange purchasing it for the intention of applying for a further BBL.

He told the owner he would pay £15,000 if they applied for the loan through their business account ahead of the sale. The owner decided not to proceed with the sale.

The final application was submitted by Mohammed but rejected because the company was dormant.

During the course of the NCA investigation, a second fraud was discovered based on documents were found in Rashid's hire car. Fingerprint analysis identified that Patric Ciwinski, 36, had attempted to fraudulently set up a false universal credit (UC) claim in the name of Robert Wright.

However, no funds were received before the fraud was discovered.

Rashid was also separately found to be fraudulently claiming universal credit in the name of an alias after failing to disclose he had a child and never having lived at the address he claimed.

Rashid was arrested by NCA officers in August 2020 and replied no comment to all questions. Mohammed was arrested in April 2021 and declined to answer any questions in interview. Malik attended a voluntary interview with officers in June 2021, Haider attended in October 2022 and Ciwinski attended in December 2021. All declined to answer questions from officers.

NCA officers found that Rashid had legally changed his name nine times in ten years in order to frustrate financial institutes' abilities to run proper credit checks.

Rehaan Mohammed

Rashid admitted one count of fraud by false representation in relation to the UC fraud but denied all other charges alongside his co-defendants. They were convicted by a jury at Southwark Crown Court after a five-week trial on 28 November 2025

They were sentenced recently (27 February). Rashid was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison, Mohammed was sentenced to three years in prison, Malik and Haider received a two year sentence suspended for two years each, and Ciwinski was given a 12 month community order. Rashid, Mohammed, Malik and Haider were also disqualified from being company directors for set periods.

HHJ Hale said the group had 'deliberately exploited a government scheme which was set up to assist a national crisis', describing their offending as 'a systematic and repeated assault on the banks and the Bounce Back scheme'.

Rashid has previous fraud convictions in the United States and Romania. Once he serves his sentence in the UK, he will be extradited to Romania to serve a further four-year prison sentence for his fraud conviction in that country.

Alistair Reid from the NCA recently said:

"Bounce Back Loans were a vital tool for businesses to help them stay afloat and continue trading during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, this family saw it as an opportunity to exploit the system at a time when the country was facing unprecedented challenges.

"The money they fraudulently claimed was instead spent on their own lavish lifestyles – funding car payments, house renovations and private school payments. All the while, Rashid was also fraudulently claiming Universal Credit payments to further supplement his deceitful income.

"Fraud of this nature undermines trust in government initiatives, diverts essential funds away from genuine businesses and damages the integrity of financial systems. The effects are far reaching, beyond the immediate loss, ultimately harming local economies, jobs, and communities that strived to recover and rebuild from Covid lockdown.

"The NCA will continue to target those exploiting systems for fraud and causing the highest harm to the economy."