UK mail firm bosses jailed for dumping post
Two company directors who made a fortune from Britain's biggest mail-dumping operation were both jailed for two years today.
Inderpal Narula, 33, and Royston Heaton, 42, binned more than 360,000 letters and parcels in skips while working at London-based mail company Mail Logistics.
The pair, who police believe could have netted as much as £3 million between them, were also fined hundreds of thousands of pounds each.
Narula, from Green Lane, Burnham in Berkshire, was told to pay £500,000 and Heaton, of The Granary, Holton, Oxford £400,000 in compensation.
Passing sentence, Judge Andrew Goymer, gave them four months to find the money.
The proceeds will be divided between high profile victims of the scam including Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, Amnesty International and the British Medical Council.
Detective Sergeant Peter Foley, from the Economic and Specialist Crime Command, said: “This is the largest case of mail destruction ever investigated and the sheer volume of people who have been affected is incredible.”
The mail was dumped on the order of Narula and Heaton by fork-lift truck driver Zhivko Antov, 26, in three huge skips across London.
Discarded post included vital hospital blood test results, university acceptance letters and charity mail, Southwark Crown Court heard.
Narula and Heaton earned between £30,000 and £40,000 in 2002 but pocketed £1 million each in 2002 by simply not paying for the mail to be delivered.
Mail Logistics was contracted to deliver post in bulk internationally and at a cut price for companies.
But vast quantities of the mail was simply tossed into skips and dumped in landfill sites.
In just 15 days Narula and Heaton were responsible for the discarding of 368,718 pieces of mail – a job carried out with a fork-lift truck by Bulgarian-born Antov.
The price charged for the distribution of each piece of mail ranged from £1 to £100.
The pair used their money on luxury houses and fast cars, while Antov – who has returned to his home country – received only his normal wages and the price of his air fare to Bulgaria.
Royal Mail became suspicious after receiving complaints from overseas magazine subscribers who had not received their orders.
Hundreds of copies of Geo-Scientist and Majesty Magazine were found in a skip at Mail Logistics' premises in Acton, west London.
Police were called in after the Royal Mail reported the company.
They seized Heaton's private computer which contained “incriminating emails between the two principals in this matter”, said Nigel Seed QC, prosecuting.
One email from Heaton read: “We are millionaires.”
Another from Narula to Heaton boasted: “50k a month can't be bad.”
In a second she told her accomplice: “Don't worry – if we get caught we can blame it on the staff.”
All three defendants admitted conspiracy to defraud between March 1, 2001, and May 15, 2002.
Judge Goymer, who banned Narula and Heaton from working as company directors for a year, lambasted the postal service, saying fraud was rife within the industry.
He said: “It is agreed by all sides that fraud in this industry is rife, indeed the word endemic was used. But that is no excuse for the way in which you behaved.
“You were both directors of the firm and as a result of the way you ran the company mail was dumped in huge quantities.
“Even if you did not give the instruction for the dumping to take place, the dishonest way in which you made money makes an immediate prison sentence inevitable.”
Sentencing Antov to nine moths suspended for a year, the judge said: “You did not make any money from this and you were a paid employee rather than a company director.”
A spokesman from Royal Mail said: “Neither Royal Mail or any of its people were involved in this case in any way other than to help the police investigate the criminal activities carried out by MML.
“With the mail market opening up to full competition in January it is even more important that customers post their mail with operators they know they can trust.”
