Greedy Brown Owl and fellow Girl Guide chief jailed for conning taxman out of £446,000: Sisters, 51 and 54, splashed money on garments and holidays after claiming again Gift Aid on donations that did not exist

Two sisters splashed out on expensive clothes and holidays after carrying out a ‘sophisticated’ £446,000 Gift Aid fraud while running Girl Guides groups.

Sara Barnbrook, 54, and Jean Barnbrook, 51, transferred hundreds of thousands of pounds into their personal bank accounts after falsely claiming money off Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), Leeds Crown Court was told.

The sisters ran two girl guides and a brownies group in Leeds but betrayed the trust placed in them by using the charity for the criminal scheme.

Over six-and-a-half years they submitted Gift Aid claims in relation £1.9million in ‘entirely fictitious’ donations, said Angus Macdonald, prosecuting.

Sara admitted a charge of cheating the public revenue and was jailed for three years and Jean was given a two-and-a-half year sentence after pleading guilty to money laundering.

Gift Aid enables charities to claim an additional 25 per cent from the government on top of donations given to them by taxpayers by submitting the relevant form.

The court heard the sisters – who were signatories on the guides and brownies official bank accounts – used the names of genuine people to make false Gift Aid claims where donations were never made and submitted grossly inflated claims on genuine donations.

When the cash arrived from HMRC they bypassed a ‘safeguard’ of requiring a third signature to authorise the transfer of cash to private bank accounts by forging the signatures of volunteers or getting them to unwittingly sign, the court heard.

Around £235,000 went into Jean’s account, £86,000 to Sara’s and around £125,000 in cashed cheques between 2013 and 2019.

Mr Macdonald said the total value of the crime in terms of funds claimed was £482,294 but only £446,852 was actually paid out by HMRC.

The money was spent by the sisters, who lived together in Leeds, on repaying loans, home improvements, luxuries, hotels, clothes and travel the court heard.

Jean – who posts vigorously about her youth work on social media – volunteered as a Brown Owl leader at Crossgates Brownies for 27 years – from 1991 to 2018. 

She also worked as an Assistant Guider for the Girl Guides in Crossgates and Manston for 23 years, from 1994 to 2018.

And she worked as a Rainbow leader for 15 years, starting the role in June 2002.

Under her LinkedIn descriptions of her volunteering work, she included her responsibilities as making sure ‘that finances and records are kept up to date.’

An investigation by HMRC was triggered when Jean called her bank to chase up a Gift Aid payment relating to a girl guide group that had been closed down 18 months earlier. The sisters had been suspended by the guides by this stage.

Even after they were put under investigation the judge said they tried to blame a ‘scapegoat’ by inventing a ‘fictitious person’ called Louise.

A letter from ‘Louise’ claimed responsibility for the fraud, but investigators discovered it was written on Jean’s computer and then sent to Sara’s computer.

Passing sentence Judge Mushtaq Khokhar said both sisters ‘played a part’ in the fraud. 

He told the pair it was a ‘sustained and sophisticated’ fraud ‘against the public purse’ that was committed ‘out of greed.’

The judge said despite the general perception ‘this was not a victimless crime’ as the victim is ‘the taxpayer.’

Anastasis Tasou, for Sara, said she had devoted 30 years of her life to girl guiding. He said the fraud came from a ‘desire to bring her standard of living to that most take for granted’.

He said she spent her teenage years sleeping on the sofa in a partially uninhabitable property with no roof on half the house.

Mr Tasou said after repaying loans ‘she can’t explain adequately why it spiralled out of control.’

‘She then delved into the luxuries of life,’ he said.

Glenn Parsons, for Jean, told the judge the fraud was ‘driven substantially by her sister’ and claimed she was ‘not the architect’ behind it.

A breakdown of spending by the pair read in court revealed how they indulged themselves with their ill-gotten gains.

Sara splashed out £24,000 on luxury items, £23,000 on clothes, £20,000 on leisure and £7,600 on travel. 

While Jean, who owned their house, spent £68,000 on luxuries, £40,000 on home improvements, £30,000 on hotels, £26,000 on clothes, £23,000 on leisure and £14,500 on travel.

After the case Tim Atkins, Operational Lead, Fraud Investigation Service, HMRC, said: ‘These sisters stole money that was supposed to support genuine charities and they used it to fund a lifestyle they could not legitimately afford.

‘They used their position of trust to forge claims, and I hope these sentences serve as a warning to others that we can and do investigate abuse of the Gift Aid system. We will now work to recover the stolen proceeds of crime.’