On Wednesday 3 May, Ibukun Chiedu Joseph was handed a six-month jail sentence suspended for 18 months at Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
The court also ordered Mr Joseph to do 120-hours community service and pay a £128 victim surcharge. Mr Joseph’s sentence follows his guilty plea for using a cloned Security Industry Authority (SIA) licence multiple times between June 2021 and January 2022 at NHS premises in North London.
The SIA’s investigators were alerted by MNX Security that there was a licence irregularity from a man who was seeking to work for them.
SIA investigators carried out an inspection of a building where security was deployed in January 2022. They asked Joseph about the licence in his possession, and he ran off straight away leaving behind his shoes, mobile phone and the cloned licence.
SIA investigators traced the identity of Mr Joseph with assistance from Home Office Immigration Enforcement.
Mr Joseph was invited to participate in an interview-under-caution with SIA investigators, but he failed to respond. Mr Joseph’s actions left the SIA with no other option than to prosecute him.
Nicola Bolton, one of the SIA’s criminal investigation managers, said:
The licensing regime is there to protect the public. Mr Joseph chose to work as an unlicensed security operative at an NHS premises putting the public at risk by his actions.
I would like to thank MNX Security who have been instrumental in this prosecution. We are continuing to combat the use of cloned SIA licences and remind industry to conduct thorough due diligence checks on licences of those operatives they deploy. The security features embedded in an SIA licence will help aid employers and they should also request secondary identification documents from the licence holder.