O'Mara gets four years jail for fraud!

 

Former Sheffield Labour - MP Jared O'Mara

A jury at Leeds crown court, have been told that the voters in the constituency of Sheffield Hallam, elected as their MP, a Labour candidate who was both incompetent and inadequate and had autism and a 'galloping' cocaine habit.

In 2017, Jared O'Mara, was elected the Labour MP for Sheffield Hallam after beating the Liberal Democrat leader and former deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg. O'Mara, aged 41, remained the MP for Sheffield Hallam until 2019.

In October 2017, it was revealed that O'Mara had posted misogynistic, racist and homophobic online comments before he became an MP. He was suspended from the Labour Party and briefly reinstated. He then resigned from the Labour Party in July 2018.

O'Mara is currently on trial at Leeds crown court accused of submitting fake invoices to fraudulently claim about £30,000 of taxpayers' money. He has been charged with eight counts of fraud by false representation. Two other individuals are also on trial with O'Mara.

The prosecution have described O'Mara as "thoroughly rotten" and "thoroughly inadequate." They have accused him of "stuffing the parliamentary payroll with mates and cronies" who did no relevant work. Prosecutor, Richard Wright KC, told a jury on Thursday that O'Mara, had invented "a series of scams" to help fund his "galloping" cocaine habit. He said O'Mara had used fraudulently claimed money to enable friends "to hang around his flat, getting drunk and snorting lines of coke, all paid by you, ladies and gentlemen, the hardworking and honest British public."

The court heard that O'Mara had fired his constituency office staff or they had resigned. The jury were told that O'Mara was taking up to five grams of cocaine, often drinking a litre of vodka, and smoking 60 cigarettes a day.

O'Mara has declined to give evidence in his own defence and is attending the hearing via videolink from his home in Sheffield. Mark Kelly KC, defending, told the jury that they should have regard to O'Mara's mental state at the time of the alleged offences and his administrative ignorance and incompetence. He said that the former MP for Sheffield Hallam, had made claims that were incompetent rather than dishonest.

All three men, denied all charges. But this week, O’Mara was given a four year jail sentence after being found guilty of six counts of fraud.