- Rupali Wagh fraudulently secured £216,250 in Bounce Back Loans for her four companies in 2020
- The 50-year-old inflated turnover figures, obtained duplicate loans for some companies, and used funds to pay off personal debts and buy stocks and shares
- Wagh was jailed for more than two years following investigations by the Insolvency Service
A fraudster who illegally obtained five Covid loans at the height of the pandemic has been jailed.
Cardiff-based Rupali Wagh fraudulently applied for £216,250 in Bounce Back Loans for her four companies between May and September 2020.
The 50-year-old inflated the turnover of her businesses to secure the loans and used some of the funds to buy stocks and shares.
She also obtained two loans for one of her companies when businesses were only entitled to a single loan.
Wagh, of Harrison Way, pleaded guilty to five counts of fraud when she appeared at Cardiff Crown Court in November 2025.
She was jailed for two years and three months when she appeared at Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court on Friday 17 July.
David Snasdell, Chief Investigator at the Insolvency Service, said
Rupali Wagh systematically targeted a scheme designed to help genuine businesses survive the pandemic.
She lied about her turnover, obtained duplicate loans for the same businesses, and used the funds to pay off personal debts and buy stocks and shares.
When confronted with the evidence, Wagh initially tried to blame someone else before admitting she had acted alone.
These are serious crimes and the Insolvency Service remains committed to bringing Covid fraudsters like Wagh to justice no matter how long it takes.
Wagh’s first fraudulent application came in early May 2020, when she applied for a £16,250 Bounce Back Loan for One2Four Accounting Ltd, a bookkeeping services company she had set up in June 2018.
She declared the company had a turnover of £65,000 and said that the funds would be used wholly for business purposes.
In reality, the company’s turnover for the previous calendar year was just £39,000.
Within weeks of receiving the funds, Wagh transferred the money into her personal bank account and spent most of it paying off debts and purchasing stocks and shares.
The following month, Wagh applied for a £50,000 loan, the maximum allowed under the scheme, for Talensetu UK Ltd.
She claimed the business had a turnover of £218,000 when dormant accounts filed by the company for the period June 2019 to June 2020 showed it was not trading.
Within days of receiving the funds, Wagh transferred the entire £50,000 into her personal account and spent it on personal finance and stocks and shares. She also transferred more than £25,000 to an account in India.
Wagh applied for a second £50,000 Bounce Back Loan for Talensetu UK Ltd in July 2020, this time from a different bank.
She claimed a turnover of £225,000 despite having estimated the company’s turnover for the next calendar year as just £72,000 on the bank account application form she completed the same day.
Wagh also falsely declared this was the company’s only Bounce Back Loan application.
After receiving the funds in August, Wagh again transferred almost the entire amount into her personal account and spent it on stocks and shares and paying off personal finance.
Wagh followed this up with a fourth fraudulent application in August 2020, seeking £50,000 for White Coconut Ltd, which traded as an Indian street food outlet in Cardiff.
She claimed a turnover of £252,000, again contradicting the £72,000 estimate she provided on her bank account application.
Wagh falsely declared this was the company’s only Bounce Back Loan application, despite having already secured £18,000 from the bank for the same business three months earlier.
Her final fraudulent application came in late September 2020, when she applied for a £50,000 loan for Indian Canteen Ltd, a street food business incorporated only in January of that year.
Wagh claimed a turnover of £206,000, despite estimating on her bank account application that the company’s turnover for the next year would be just £82,000.
She later transferred more than £25,000 of the loan funds to White Coconut Ltd.
In interviews with the Insolvency Service, Wagh initially attempted to blame a third party for one of the loan applications, claiming someone sharing her computer had made the application without her knowledge. She later retracted this and acknowledged she had acted alone.
Wagh admitted using the funds to pay off personal credit card debts and loans, saying she thought that by clearing her personal debts she would be helping her businesses.
The Insolvency Service is seeking to recover the fraudulently obtained funds under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.
