Contractor guilty of £50,000 Covid loan fraud
22nd April 2025
UK: A contractor offering plumbing, heating and air conditioning installation has been convicted of fraudulently claiming a £50,000 Covid Bounce Back loan.
Florin-Petrica Bodale, operating in Harrow, who claimed his business had a turnover of more than £200,000, was sentenced to 13-months imprisonment, suspended for 18 months.
The Bounce Back loan scheme was established by the UK government in early 2020 to support small and medium-sized businesses by allowing them to borrow between £2,000 and £50,000 based on up to 25% of a company’s turnover.
In November 2020, the 34-year-old successfully applied to a bank for a Covid Bounce Back loan of £50,000 but an Insolvency Service investigation found that he had falsely claimed the company’s turnover was £240,000. In reality, the turnover of the company was around £22,000 – meaning he was only entitled to £5,500.
On 10 April 2025, at Snaresbrook Crown Court, Bodale was found guilty of one count of fraud by false representation. In addition to the suspended sentence, he was ordered to complete 250 hours of unpaid work.
In 2022, before the criminal investigation, Bodale signed a ten-year bankruptcy restriction undertaking which also included a ten-year director disqualification following a civil investigation by the Insolvency Service. The court noted that he had repaid some money as part of the bankruptcy process.
