The basic facts at the heart of this story – which have never been in dispute – are mind-boggling.

For more than three and a half years, Kashim Chowdhury worked for a number of government departments at the same time and received multiple salaries.

In all, he held eight overlapping jobs across the civil service. He never had less than two full-time posts on the go, sometimes three, and at the peak of the fraud, he had five different bosses: at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra); the UK Health Security Agency; the Department for Business and Trade; the Food Standards Agency and the Home Office.

As we said, mind-boggling.

The bottom line is that Chowdhury, 56, was paid £349,378.81 for effectively doing nothing.

Yet he asked everyone to believe there was no criminal intent on his part, that he 'wasn't thinking straight' [at least eight times?] when he misled managers about his employment status.

No one did – and yesterday he was found guilty of nine counts of fraud, including making false representations and of making a dishonest gain.

One farcical fact – in a crowded field – left the jury in little doubt and epitomised the dysfunction in parts of the civil service.

At the time he was hired by five departments simultaneously, Chowdhury was contracted to work 183 hours per week – more than the total number of hours in seven days, even if, as the prosecutor pointed out, 'he didn't sleep at all and worked night and day every day of the week including the weekend'.

This also meant that bona fide applicants were prevented from doing all these jobs.

The wider scandal is that he is perhaps the most egregious example of a trend that is becoming increasingly common in both the public and private sector.

The phenomenon, which is costing taxpayers and businesses a fortune, even has its own name: 'polygamous working', so ubiquitous has it become since the proliferation of remote working.

There are a number of particularly alarming aspects to the Chowdhury case, however.

First, Chowdhury operated in plain sight. He used his own national insurance number throughout the scam. All his details were genuine. Nothing was made up, which, in its own way, makes what happened all the more shocking.

How could he have got away with it for so long?

We could not get an answer from official government channels but the 'back-office' services of government departments, such as payroll and HR, are outsourced to external private companies which suggests that in this instance the 'right arm', perhaps Defra, didn't seem to know what the 'left arm', say the Home Office or the Department for Business and Trade, was doing.

It is hard to think of another explanation for a civil servant receiving so many simultaneous salaries for so long from effectively the same ultimate employer.

Second, even though each manager Chowdhury worked for thought he was of absolutely no use whatsoever – how could he be in the circumstances – little or no disciplinary action was forthcoming. 'Exceptionally poor' was the verdict of his boss at the UK Health Security Agency... 'passive and slow to deliver tasks' (his manager at Defra)... 'He wasn't interested in the job'... (his manager at the Home Office)... 'very poor performance' (his manager at Department for Business and Trade).

Chowdhury even wore white make-up on a video call to appear ill on one occasion, coughing and spluttering for added effect, but his supervisor couldn't help but notice that the make-up began to separate on his forehead as he was speaking and then, lo and behold, his real skin colour was revealed.

Laughable, right?

What isn't so funny is that he remained in this job as a senior project manager with the Health Security Agency, earning £52,606 a year, for 18 months (when, as we know, he was also working for four other departments and getting equally bad reviews).

Individual managers were not to blame.

Sacking anyone in the public sector is an onerous task, made even more difficult today by new workers' rights being introduced by the Government, especially when staff claim, as Chowdhury did, he was suffering from stress – 'mixed anxiety and depressive disorder', to quote one medical certificate – exacerbated by the deteriorating health of his mother who had cancer and the recurrence of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The condition, diagnosed a decade ago, related to a personal injury payment after he was forced out of the Department for Education, he told Southwark Crown Court.

There can be no argument he got £10,000 in compensation from the department but PTSD is commonly associated with soldiers returning from war and people who have been involved in life-changing traumas, such as a serious road accident or being the victim of an assault.

Working for the DfE, not so much.

Chowdhury's civil service career has been embroiled in controversy, of one kind or another, for many years.

But there is one revelation that has gone unreported.

Kashim Chowdhury was a 'programme manager in public health' (annual salary £49,203) for Tower Hamlets Council for more than two years until June 2022.

He was sacked, according to a whistleblower who spoke to the Daily Mail, after it was discovered that, contrary to the 'declaration of interest' form he completed claiming no other employment, he had, in fact, also been working for Defra for a considerable time.

Had this information been shared, then you would probably not be reading about Chowdhury today because his fraud would have been dramatically curtailed.

Instead, he continued working for Defra and other government departments for another year, until July 2023, when police forced entry into his address and interviewed him under caution.

Chowdhury was finally charged with nine counts of fraud in April 2025.

But guess what? By then, he had already been rehired by Tower Hamlets, the source said, on a fixed-term contract in the homelessness service, which was later made permanent.

'I kid you not,' the source said. 'Nobody knows how or why. Not only were they going to give him another permanent contract, he was also in line for promotion and a new salary in excess of £60,000 a year.'

Chowdhury was only believed to have been dismissed from Tower Hamlets last year. The authority was approached for comment but at the time of writing had neither confirmed nor denied these allegations.

Kashim Chowdhury was an unlikely culprit, by all accounts.

'He was a bit odd,' the person who worked with him at the council, said. 'I only saw him once in the office. It was the middle of the summer and he was wearing a bobble hat. People felt a bit sorry for him.

'All of us were shocked when the news came out of all the jobs he had. You'd never have expected him in a million years.'

He arrived at the courthouse wearing black sunglasses, a black mask covering his mouth and an oversized duffle-style coat with a hoodie, in an apparent attempt to avoid being recognised.

He still lives in the same Georgian terrace off Brick Lane in London's East End where his late parents resided – his father was a tailor's machinist – for many years. They were originally from Pakistan but settled in this country from Bangladesh, where Chowdhury also married his wife whom he met through a relative in 2017.

However, the couple no longer live together.

The house, worth £2.1million, is in a fashionable part of the city. Actress Keira Knightley and artists Tracey Emin and Gilbert and George live in the vicinity. Following his conviction, the money Chowdhury defrauded from the taxpayer could now be recouped from the equity in the property under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

The Crown Prosecution Service has already applied to register a charge on the house which is also at the centre of a bitter family dispute in the High Court.

Chowdhury has been accused by his three siblings of putting 'undue influence' on their 76-year-old mother, who spoke almost no English, to put the family home in his name a week before she died from cancer in 2023.

Chowdhury, who studied politics and history at university and obtained a master's degree in public policy and management, has a healthy bank balance regardless – thanks to his multiple jobs, presumably.

In a single month (in 2023) he was paid take-home wages of just over £11,000, which 'you might think,' prosecutor Lucy Organ told the jury, 'was the motivating factor'.

Earlier, between March 2020 and September 2022, he transferred £250,000 to his own family and payments to pay off credit cards but was still left with £30,000 in his Barclays account, more than £80,000 in a Virgin Money account and £45,000 in premium bonds.

His fraudulent activities began post-Covid when he exploited the work from home and sick note culture.

You can't work for five different government departments at the same time if you have to be at your desk.

Several witnesses said they had never come face to face with him until giving evidence against him at his trial. In one period, for example, when he was 'working' for the Department for Business and Trade, he went on sick leave for ten weeks not long after returning from annual leave.

His line managers said Chowdhury would pepper them with excuses about his need to care for his ailing mother, avoiding video calls and spurning otherwise compulsory meetings.

They repeatedly tried to make allowances for him and his difficult domestic situation in an effort to coax an improvement to his dismal performance.

Richard Arkless, from the Home Office, recalled Chowdhury being allowed to log into to an 'in-person team meeting' remotely due to his caring responsibilities.

'He logged on but during the day there was little to zero interaction,' he said in his statement. 'The camera was off so I cannot say whether he was present, but he wasn't engaging.'

Chowdhury's general performance was 'poor', Mr Arkless said, and, in an all too familiar story, he quickly breached the limit for the number of sick days permitted during his short period of service.

Nevertheless, Chowdhury dismissed criticisms of his work performance – 'I reject them all' – and said he had no intention of defrauding anyone even though he admitted making mistakes in his job applications.

Red flags about his behaviour eventually prompted an investigation by the National Fraud Initiative (NFI), a body set up by the government to detect offenders like Kashim Chowdhury. A data matching exercise across 26 London boroughs to identify 'polygamous working' – piloted by the NFI over a period of a few months last year – resulted in 22 dismissals or resignations and uncovered £400,000 in salary overpayments.

Since 2016, 301 employees engaging in 'polygamous working' have been identified, 256 of whom were in England alone. The NFI says it has recovered salary payments worth up to £1.35million so far.

The worrying rise in such cases has spawned a cottage industry on social media offering advice and tips on how to hoodwink your employer, like 'mouse jiggling' – a technique to keep your keyboard active while you're not at your desk.

'I recently found out my boss's boss is getting promoted, and his new salary is 65 per cent of what I make at best,' a polygamous worker, who remained anonymous, boasted on Reddit.

Kashim Chowdhury, in other words, is just the tip of a growing iceberg of fraud.