A civil servant who secretly held five full-time government jobs at the same time has been found guilty of fraud after taking more than £284,000 of taxpayers' money.

Kashim Chowdhury, 56, from east London, was convicted of nine counts of fraud at Southwark Crown Court on Monday 9 November. The jury deliberated for seven hours before returning unanimous guilty verdicts on eight counts of fraud by false representation and one count of fraud by failure to disclose.

The judge warned Chowdhury that he faced a very significant custodial sentence. He will be sentenced at a later date.

Five salaries at once

At the height of the deception in the spring of 2023, Chowdhury was being paid full-time salaries by five separate parts of government at the same time: the UK Health Security Agency, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department for Business and Trade, the Food Standards Agency and the Home Office.

Between 2020 and 2023 he held eight overlapping full-time public-sector jobs in total, and was paid £350,000 over that period. At his busiest, his contracts required him to work 183 hours a week, more hours than there are in seven days.

Prosecutors told the court that Chowdhury was guilty of deliberate, intentional dishonesty and of exploiting the system. He had already held three full-time jobs when he applied for further roles, including posts at the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and an NHS trust.

Working from home hid the fraud

Chowdhury worked entirely from home, from the east London house he shared with his mother, and told his employers he needed to be at home to care for her. His mother had dementia and terminal cancer in 2023.

He also obtained sick notes from his GP. In April 2023 he was off sick from four of his employers at the same time, citing mixed anxiety and depressive disorder, while still being paid by all of them.

The deception only came to light in 2024, when the government's National Fraud Initiative, which searches civil service payroll and other databases every two years for anomalies, flagged the duplication to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Chowdhury was charged with nine counts of fraud in April 2025.

What happens next

The Crown Prosecution Service has applied to register a charge against the family home in east London, a four-storey, six-bedroom house valued at £2.1 million. The property is also the subject of a separate High Court family dispute, in which Chowdhury's siblings allege he pressured their dying mother into increasing his share of the home. Chowdhury denies those claims.

The National Fraud Initiative has identified 23 similar cases across London in its most recent report, raising questions about how easily overlapping employment can go undetected when civil service human resources systems are not centralised and staff work remotely.

Chowdhury left the Civil Service in September 2023. He arrived at court alone each day during the trial.