A CHARITY boss conned council bosses out of more than £146,000 amid false claims over care provisions for children with disabilities, a court heard.

Part of an elaborate scam by Feeraz Begum, who managed Brierfield-based Caring Today, saw her set up two private firms to try to create a trail of false invoices, Preston Crown Court was told.

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In the dock alongside her is husband Mohammed Fayyaz, who is said to have pocketed £20,829, and her brother, Mohammed Nawaz, who is said to have earned around £40,000 from the alleged fraud.

One of Begum’s session managers, Asima Parveen, is accused of helping her boss to provide false invoices to Lancashire County Council for the Aiming Higher programme, claiming higher attendance at care sessions than was the case.

Three others - Farhat Afsar, Anam Iqbal and Sarah Irshad - are charged with helping Begum to launder money accumulated as part of the alleged fraud.

Bank records show funds totalling £20,829 being sent from Home Care and Domiciliary Care Network (Lancashire) Ltd, a firm controlled by Begum, to Westholme School, Blackburn, where one of her daughters was a pupil from September 2009.

Jurors were told that the scale of the county council contracts handled by Caring Today, between July 2007 and March 2012, amounted to more than £405,000.

And it appeared that at least some of the sessions for disabled children had been delivered appropriately, especially before 2009, the court heard.

But Gordon Hennell, prosecuting, said: “It appears that some time in 2009, and the prosecution cannot say precisely when, that honest endeavour and hard work gave way to greed.”

Peter Slater, chairman of Caring Today, had wrote in the charity’s annual report between 2009 and 2011, describing Begum as a ‘children’s champion’ and the charity’s ‘best asset’ going forward.

But by 2012, Mr Slater, who had been informed about various discrepancies in the charity’s accounting records, described a ‘maelstrom’ which had engulfed Caring Today, expressing a hope new directors could be found quickly.

Mr Slater, now a probation officer, had been a caretaker at Brierfield Community Centre, from which Caring Today mainly operated, when he was first approached to become involved with the charity.

He left the centre in 2008, to train as a probation officer, but remained as chairman of the charity.

Mr Slater later told police that while Nawaz was on the charity’s board from 2005 to 2009, neither he nor Nawaz had undertaken any paid work for Caring Today.

Begum had initially established the charity but had been recruited as its £24,000 a year manager in December 2004. Trustees were not permitted to provide any paid services for the charity, with minor exceptions.

Mr Hennell said that in early 2010 Lancashire County Council officials had noticed ‘anomalies’ between the attendance data, for disabled children’s sessions, and the invoices provided by Caring Today.

Begum told council representatives that the charity’s computer had ‘crashed’ and all attendance data had been lost. But it was noted she had previously told the authority the machine had been stolen during a break-in.

Mr Hennell said that Begum also requested a private meeting with county council staff, away from charity board members.

She told them that Home Care and Domiciliary Network, which she ran, had been taking on sessions which should have been provided by Caring Today, as the charity ‘could not meet the children’s needs’.

Council officials were concerned about the ‘blurring’ of the lines between the charity and the private provider, which had even seen children transferred between different venues on the same day.

An audit of the charity appeared to show that care sessions had been provided to the same children, at different locations, at the same time, on the same day.

The council was also deeply concerned over children with disabilities apparently being moved around between different care venues on the same day.

The court heard that further checks with parents revealed that, on a number of occasions, claims had been made for their child’s attendance when they had never in fact been present, for one reason or another.

Begum, 45, and Fayyaz, 50, both of Reedley Road, Brierfield, and Nawaz, 43, of Vernon Street, Nelson each deny conspiracy to defraud.

Begum and Parveen, 30, of Camden Street, Nelson, have pleaded not guilty to offences of furnishing false information to Lancashire County Council.

Afsar, 41, of Kelswick Drive, Nelson, Iqbal, 25, of York Street, Nelson, and Irshad, formerly of Nelson but now living in High Wycombe, each deny money laundering accusations involving Begum, over a period between 2010 and 2011.

The trial continues.