Former Labour MP Jared O'Mara found guilty of £24,000 'extravagant lifestyle' expenses fraud

A former Labour MP has been found guilty of making fraudulent expenses claims to fund an "extravagant lifestyle" and cocaine habit while in office.

Jared O’Mara, who represented Sheffield Hallam from 2017 to 2019, was convicted of six counts of fraud after trying to claim around £24,000 of taxpayers’ money.

Appearing in court by video-link throughout the trial, O'Mara did not visibly react to the verdicts.

Former Labour MP for Sheffield Hallam Jared O'Mara speaking in the House of Commons
PA

The 41-year-old went on trial for submitting “dishonest” invoices to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) between June and August 2019.

Leeds Crown Court heard that he made four claims for a total of £19,400 from a “fictitious” organisation called Confident About Autism South Yorkshire, which jurors were told referred to his friend, John Woodliff.

O’Mara also submitted a false contract of employment for Woodliff, “pretending” he worked as a constituency support officer.

The ex-MP was found not guilty of two fraud charges over invoices from another friend, Gareth Arnold, for media and PR work that prosecutors had claimed was never carried out.

But he was convicted of an offence of fraud after emailing Ipsa in February 2020, falsely claiming the police investigation into him had been completed and that he was entitled to be paid the two invoices relating to Arnold, which totalled £4,650.

Arnold, who became O’Mara’s chief of staff in June 2019, was found guilty of three fraud charges, and cleared of three.

Woodliff was found not guilty of one offence of fraud.

O’Mara and Arnold will be sentenced at the same court on Thursday.

John Woodliff, co-defendant of former MP Jared O'Mara
Jon Super

Opening the case just over two weeks ago, prosecutor James Bourne-Arton told the jury: “O’Mara viewed Ipsa, and the taxpayers’ money that they administered, as a source of income that was his to claim and use as he wished, not least in the enjoyment of his extensive cocaine habit.”

The court heard that O’Mara had a “dysfunctional” office which was “haemorrhaging staff” at the time he made the claims.

Former case worker Kevin Gregory-Coyne said O’Mara went to his constituency office “once or twice” in six months and attended one staff meeting while apparently “on some sort of substance”, with Arnold saying O'Mara became an "absentee MP" after firing his staff in April in 2019.

Jurors heard that one message from Arnold to a friend that month described O’Mara as being “a few k in debt with a dealer”.

He said he had “lost his patience” with O’Mara after he apparently drank a litre of vodka before a TV appearance and sent a young female staff member messages “calling her things like ‘my little angel’ and ‘you’re beautiful'”.

O’Mara won Sheffield Hallam for Labour from former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Nick Clegg in 2017, but later left the party after a series of controversies.

He stayed in office as an independent MP but did not contest the 2019 general election.