Tax-dodging Bexhill madam could be home for Christmas

A Bexhill mother jailed for running a high-class escort agency while pocketing £300,000 in benefits and hiding £650,000 in illicit cash could be home for Christmas after an Appeal Court ruling.
Janine Adeleke Picture courtesy of SWNS.com SUS-151223-151900001Janine Adeleke Picture courtesy of SWNS.com SUS-151223-151900001
Janine Adeleke Picture courtesy of SWNS.com SUS-151223-151900001

Mum-of-five Janine Adeleke, 44, was said by prosecutors to have illegally claimed benefits while making £1.5m secretly renting out escorts.

Adeleke, who lived in an eight-bedroom home in Watermill Lane, was also accused of dodging tax payments while living the high life and was jailed for three years in November last year.

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But London’s Criminal Appeal Court granted her permission to appeal against those convictions, after she begged to be freed to spend Christmas with her children.

An investigation led by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), working alongside the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), revealed for more than seven years Janine Adeleke claimed to be unemployed.

The investigation found Adeleke had not declared any income, stealing more than £312,000 in unpaid income tax, national insurance contributions and tax credits payments.

At the same time she fraudulently claimed over £37,000 in income support and other state benefits, and laundered £157,000 of illicit cash.

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But she was actually running Carltons of London, which offered ‘high class’ escort services, providing the ‘finest London escorts to gentlemen of distinction’.

Jurors that convicted Adeleke were told she claimed state handouts while her family enjoyed private health care and David Lloyd gym memberships.

One of her children went to exclusive Roedean boarding school for girls and she was also said to have spent £100,000 on luxury holidays and a fleet of lavish hire cars.

Her agency took a 35 per cent cut from its escorts’ earnings, who were charging clients up to £2,000-an-hour, prosecutors claimed

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Adeleke was accused of failing to disclose significant income between November, 2006, and October, 2014.

She was found guilty of dishonestly failing to notify a change in circumstances, two counts of fraud, two of cheating the public revenue and one of being knowingly concerned in the fraudulent payment of tax credits on September 29, 2015, at Canterbury Crown Court and sentenced two months later at the same court.

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