Family defrauded Royal Mail out of £70m, court told

A family defrauded Royal Mail out of more than £70 million by running a “dishonest scheme to line their own pockets” for more than a decade, a court has been told.

Parmjeet Sandhu, 56, and his nephew Balginder Sandhu, 46, gave misleading declarations about the quantity, weight, class and destination of mail to make money from Royal Mail and other postal services, it is alleged.

From May 2008 to May 2017 the prosecution said the pair — and a third man, Lakhwinder Sekhon, 42, who is not a relation — manipulated docket spreadsheets for “thousands of items” posted through several logistic companies in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire.

The men worked under Narinder Sandhu, Parmjeet Sandhu’s brother, who was the “architect” of the fraud through his company