A JUDGE denounced the postal industry as rife with fraud yesterday as he jailed two corrupt private mail firm bosses who ordered hundreds of thousands of letters to be dumped.

Inderpal Narula, 33, and Royston Heaton, 42, made more than £1 million each by dumping mail to save on the cost of delivering it while working for Mail Logistics.

Discarded post included vital hospital blood test results, doctors’ letters of certification, and acceptance letters for university places. Other victims included banks that lost sales materials, and Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, which lost copies of its product catalogue.

Mail Logistics, based in London, was contracted to deliver post in bulk but Narula and Heaton, both directors, ordered much of the post to be dumped in skips.

The price charged for the distribution of each piece of mail ranged from £1 to £100. Narula and Heaton spent it on luxury houses and fast cars.

Judge Andrew Goymer, at Southwark Crown Court, banned Narula and Heaton from working as company directors for a year and jailed them both for two years. While sentencing the pair he said: “It is agreed by all sides that fraud in this industry is rife, indeed the word endemic was used. But that is no excuse for the way in which you behaved.

“You were both directors of the firm and as a result of the way you ran the company mail was dumped in huge quantities. The dishonest way in which you made money makes an immediate prison sentence inevitable.”

The two defendants were also ordered to pay compensation. Narula, from Burnham in Berkshire, was told to pay £500,000 and Heaton, of Holton, Oxford, £400,000.

Detective Sergeant Peter Foley, from the Economic and Specialist Crime Command, said: “This is the largest case of mail destruction ever investigated and the sheer volume of people who have been affected is incredible.”

The Royal Mail became suspicious after receiving complaints from overseas magazine subscribers who had not received their orders.

Hundreds of copies of Geo-Scientist and Majesty Magazine were then found in a skip at Mail Logistics’ premises in Acton, west London.

Officers also found leaflets and letters from the charity Amnesty International as well as letters of certification allowing doctors to work overseas from the British Medical Council.

Police were called in by the Royal Mail and Heaton’s private computer was then seized, which allowed investigators to read e-mails between the pair.

In one e-mail Heaton bragged: “We are millionaires.” In another Narula told his accomplice: “Don’t worry — if we get caught we can blame it on the staff.” Another e-mail from Narula to Heaton boasted: “50k a month can’t be bad.”

In just 15 days Narula and Heaton were responsible for the discarding of 368,718 pieces of mail, which were dumped on their orders into skips destined for landfill sites by Zhivko Antov, 26, a forklift driver from Bulgaria.

Antov, who received only his wages and the price of an air fare to his homeland, was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment suspended for a year for his role in the scam.

All three defendants admitted conspiracy to defraud between March 1, 2001, and May 15, 2002.

A spokesman for Royal Mail said: “Neither Royal Mail or any of its people were involved in this case in any way other than to help the police investigate the criminal activities carried out by MML.

“With the mail market opening up to full competition in January it is even more important that customers post their mail with operators they know they can trust.”

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Donor organ allowed child’s own heart to heal
• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Sacha Baron Cohen forced to tone down Brüno