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Popular Nigerian Pastor In UK, Sam Kayode Arrested For £41.M Scam

Published

8 years ago

June 27, 2016

A Nigerian school accountant based in the UK has been jailed for nine years for stealing £4.1million of taxpayers’ money and lavishing it on four women. In Britain’s biggest ever education fraud, school accounts manager Sam Kayode, 59 – a part-time pastor –spent the cash on his real wife, a second ‘wife’ and two alleged mistresses.

He bought luxury cars including a Mercedes, an Audi TT sports car and an Infiniti, and is also feared to have sent much of the money to his homeland of Nigeria.

Despite overwhelming evidence, he tried to blame the theft on his late wife Grace and an office junior. He claimed they conspired to smear him by transferring the money to his joint account in revenge for his adultery.
Kayode spent seven years looting the accounts of Haberdashers’ Aske’s state schools in south London, now an academy chain acclaimed by the Government.

During those years no questions were asked about the secretive man who locked himself in his office to work late, after arriving in a Mercedes, wearing £500 Gucci shoes and carrying a Louis Vuitton briefcase.
It was revealed only when a school cleaner stumbled across Kayode’s paperwork. She then made an anonymous call to the new chief finance officer, Yvonne Smithers, who was already suspicious about Kayode’s secrecy.
Last night Kayode, who was paid £57,000 a year, was behind bars after he was found guilty of obtaining £150,000 by theft and £3.95million by fraud. A nine-year jail sentence, near the maximum, was handed down at Woolwich Crown Court on Friday.