Staff Steals £900K UK City Council, Flees To US

This is the first picture of a man who stole over £900,000 from the city council and then fled to the US to become a psychic medium.

Tyler Evans carried out the sophisticated fraud over a three-year period.

After joining the council in 2005, Evans worked in various departments before joining the highway’s team in the role of customer engagement officer in 2010.

His job involved dealing with refunds of deposits paid to contractors once works had been completed.

Between 2010 and 2013, he submitted 35 false forms to his managers which resulted in payments being authorized that were paid into 10 separate bank accounts.

The money was sent to accounts in Evans’s own name, his business account Called Paranormal Activities, as well those of friends and associates.

Raj Punia, prosecuting at Birmingham Crown Court, said Evans made various transactions with the money being transferred in order to make it harder for the original source to be detected.

“It was planned and sophisticated with false documents produced to managers in order that the bank payments would be authorized,” she said, reports BirminghamLive.

She went on: “As a result of the defendant’s fraud, suspicion also fell on a line manager who was suspended pending an investigation but was later exonerated.”

She said Evans had been extradited from the US in December last year.

Evans, 42, of no fixed address, who had previously admitted fraud by abuse of position of trust and money laundering, was jailed for four years and eight months.

Robert Tolhurst, defending, said Evans suffered from a gambling addiction and had lost most of the money he received in casinos.

He said that the defendant had always had an interest in the paranormal, and after being dismissed from his job had gone to the United States in 2015, with around $10,000, to rebuild his life.

While there he had carried on his involvement with paranormal events and was involved in guided tours.