THREE men who realised that a government scheme to teach people computer skills was a “licence to print money” were jailed yesterday.

The men got away with more than £2 million of taxpayers’ money because the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) made no effort to check that the courses on offer were legitimate. The fraudsters were paid £200 by the Government for every student they signed up, even though all the “course” comprised was a pirated copy of a CD-Rom that cost them £1 each.

Stuart Leary, 39, John Stirling, 41, and Steve Moran, 29, enjoyed a life of luxury thanks to the Individual Learning Account scheme, the DfES programme that was set up in 2000 to provide subsidised learning for students from home.

Leary paid a team of agents to sign up more than 8,000 “students” for his computer correspondence course. Although each student was supposed to contribute £50 towards the course, Leary told them not to bother.

The Government announced in October 2001 that it was closing the Individual Learning Account scheme because it was open to fraud.

Before it was shut down Leary, from Poole, Dorset, had brought in Stirling and Moran, who already had a database of 10,000 other students who had signed up to the course. The trio were then able to claim the difference between the £150 on offer when they joined and the £200 to which it was subsequently increased.

Bournemouth Crown Court was told that Stirling, from Glasgow, and Moran, from Birmingham, were able to pay cash for their Jaguar XJ8 cars and Leary spent £80,000 on a Porsche.

They avoided paying tax by putting the money in offshore accounts. The court was told that the DfES became suspicious of the three men and contacted the police. Andrew Wheeler, for the prosecution, told the court that Leary recruited the first 8,000 students and sent them the copied CD-Roms.

He said: “In reality the disc was a plagiarised version of other software that was repackaged and renamed. The CD-Rom was sent to most students although some didn’t get it at all. The discs cost £1 each but the company charged the Government £200 a time. It became a licence to print money. Leary employed teams of agents to sell the courses which were marketed as being free.”

Jailing the men, Judge Roger Jarvis said that he had heard with “dismay” how a laudable scheme to give people skills had been ruined by “poor management and greed”.

He said: “Up and down the country there are men and women working as hard as they can for themselves and their families. In many families partners both work to provide for the family and see little of each other.

“It is their efforts that produced the taxes to fund this scheme and they will be outraged to see how much you made in such a short period of time. Each of you placed money outside this jurisdiction to avoid paying taxes on those funds.”

Leary, who pleaded guilty to two charges of fraudulent trading, was jailed for 3½ years and was banned from being a company director for seven years.

Moran and Stirling, who were found guilty of conspiracy to defraud after a trial, were both sent to prison for three years and banned from holding directorships for five years. After the case Detective Sergeant Andrew Strong, of Bournemouth CID, said that scores of similar cases were pending. “Altogether the men made just over £2 million. They bought expensive cars and travelled extensively,” he said.

Detective Sergeant Strong said that the police would attempt to reclaim the money.

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