Couple jailed for stealing personal data of colleagues in £650k tax fraud

Luciana Akanbi, a Transport for London (TfL) HR employee, and her husband, Femi Akanbi, have been sentenced to three years and nine months in prison for a sophisticated tax fraud. Luciana Akanbi exploited her access to internal systems to steal personal data of 40 colleagues, including National Insurance numbers and passport details. Between September 2021 and January 2022, the pair used 38 devices to submit 139 fraudulent tax rebate claims to HMRC, totalling £650,000.

The fraud resulted in a loss of £433,000 from the public purse. At Woolwich Crown Court, the judge described the incident as the organisation's "worst ever" data breach, noting that it had damaged employee trust and forced TfL to conduct a complete overhaul of its internal systems. Richard Mullings, head of counter fraud at TfL, confirmed: "We immediately notified the Information Commissioner's Office and can reassure those working for us that we have since introduced a range of measures to further tighten up access to personal staff data and ensure this cannot happen again."

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